HR 8h Meeri's Music
by slytherinsal
Summary: Autumn 2522 to end 2523: T'arla's cousin Meeri is keen to learn the ways of Harping though this means estrangement from her parents. Like Kitiara, Meeri decides not to make an issue of gender. Her ability to tune attracts the interest of Master Domick.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Meeri came to the Weyr, ostensibly on Search, with her father's vicious words ringing in her ears.

"If you take notice of that Harper rubbish, you're no daughter of mine!"

Could one's own father be totally wrong? And was it disloyal to think so? Yet Cousin Tassarla's – T'arla's, she corrected herself – playing and singing was much richer, more vibrant, more varied since she had learned Harper tricks, and it did not sound like any cheap trickery either.

Meeri had never enjoyed a close relationship with her father anyway; he was too dogmatic a person to be close to. And she had missed her merry cousin. Music was more important to her than her father or any of her kin bar T'arla. And her new cousin, Bronze Rider L'gal seemed worth getting to know too, she supposed. He was nice; and he had promised that the Harperweyr could teach her quickly enough to make up for turns of missed education through living Holdless, enough to avoid being in trouble with some terrifying sounding entity called Master Morshall at the Harper Hall.

L'gal was stern as well as kind; she had sung and whistled happily to herself, making up the tunes as she went along as usual; and he had been decidedly snippy when she told him that no, she had no way of recording it and nor did she bother to remember tunes she made because she could always make up more.

Apparently it was an important Harper thing to keep tunes to use over; and when L'gal pointed out that it was nice for other people who could NOT make up fresh tunes daily to have your music to listen to she quite saw his point.

Meeri had actually been astounded to find out that most people did NOT just make up tunes to please themselves as they went along, indeed could not! How sorry she was for those people! L'gal was quickly able to persuade her to let him jot down her little tunes for those poor folk who were so deprived that music did not make itself naturally for them to suit every task.

One of the first things that happened in the Weyr was being given a firelizard egg by T'arla, who thrust it at her younger cousin in her abrupt and boyish fashion.

"Here, you can get most of the hard work done learning stuff while the shell hardens….. I've not much time for 'em myself but if you're off to the Harper Hall you never know when it'll be handy to have a partisan friend watch out for your stuff and help against bullies. Dunno what colour it is, but it sure has a good pedigree, it's one of Merry's."

"Merry?" Meeri asked.

"Little queen that belongs to Queenrider T'lana - the little redhead. Merry is one of Merga's, who belongs to Lord Groghe and she's out of Beauty, Menolly's queen. THEY always involve their humans in the clutching, not like some lizards; in fact Merry always clutches in Mirrith's weyr and expects her favourite dragon to help care for her eggs" she grinned. "I swear she thinks Mirrith is an outsize firelizard. They get up to all sorts of antics – I mind how shocked I was the first time I saw Merry fly full tilt into Mirrith's mouth! She goes _Between_ you see, to just under Mirrith's tail fork and grunts like she's squeezing out as if she's gone all the way through, silly critter" T'arla grinned again "And Mirrith is pretty indulgent. They sing too. T'rin's Prism does a superb descant; better than any boy, even if you stood on his nuts."

Meeri grinned. She knew her cousin too well to even imagine T'arla doing anything so cruel to any of the apprentice boys under her!

And this gift of a firelizard egg was beyond price; how kind it was of her cousin's exalted friends to consider letting her have one! And there would be no strings attached; T'arla would never agree to anything like that!

oOoOo

Somebody called Horgey had gone to the Harper Hall to confirm as a Journeyman; and he was reckoned the best at bringing on those who needed catching up, so in his absence all the Harpers rallied round. It was a little galling to be surpassed by Kullana, more than five turns Meeri's junior; but Meeri shrugged and got over it. No point getting your yolk addled because others were more talented and more knowledgeable than you, she told herself cheerfully!

I'linne and her pedantic speech scared Meeri a little until, after a particularly involved period to T'rin, the solemn faced Green Rider Harper deliberately winked at the newcomer while T'rin was still plainly trying to unravel what she had actually said.

"There was something funny, Apprentice Meeri?" asked T'rin irritably as Meeri could not stop a grin coming to her face.

"No sir; only wind" said Meeri, blandly. There had been discussion, with T'lana's triplets and T'rin's daughters births, over how much of a baby's first smiles were deliberate efforts and how much was as the Healers insisted, only wind.

T'rin decided to leave it.

T'rin was himself very good at bringing on those left behind; he had been in that situation himself when he first went to the Harper Hall. Meeri was even further behind than he had been; at least he had been able to read and write fluently, while for her it was still a laborious task; and he had also been word perfect with all the teaching ballads. Meeri had never even sung the Duty Song!

Unlike T'arla though, who had resisted learning, Meeri took her cousin's converted views to heart and proceeded to put her heart and soul into study. By the time her little brown firelizard, whom she named Snatch, had hatched, and his voracious appetite ate into her studies, she had already learned more than she had ever realised that there was to learn!

oOoOo

Meanwhile L'gal had jotted down several of Meeri's spontaneous tunes and took them to show Master Domick.

"These have great potential" said the Master. "But none of them are finished. Is your apprentice lacking in application that they are left?"

"Oh no!" sighed L'gal "It's just that it comes to her so easily that she tunes, then discards and moves onto something else as her mood moves or her chores change. I'm still not sure that she wholly believes me that most people do NOT make up music as they go along just to suit their mood. These are only the ones she hums or whistles; I swear that music passes constantly through her head in time to her current occupation, though she does at least hum and whistle most of the time regardless of what she's doing. Even bagging firestone" he handed another sheet to the Tunemaster.

Domick hummed to himself, the the heavy fourth beat fitting the rhythm of hefting rock, glissands echoing the crackling, crumbling feel of it.

"I see what you mean" he grunted. "She NEEDS the Harper Hall. I hate to put you down, but neither you nor T'rin are capable of developing this."

"I concur fully, Master" said L'gal "And she's got no interest in Impressing. Dragons to her are useful transports, quite pretty, and handy for dealing with Thread. She wants to come; but she came to us virtually illiterate, never mind having basic musical training or even knowledge. We need to prepare her. T'rin coped: T'rin does coping very well. Meeri probably could, but having the twin handicaps of being born Holdless and being a girl….could you hide her like you did with Kit?"

Domick grunted again.

"I'll see what I can do" he said "Get her up to standard and we'll talk again. And keep noting down everything she produces."

oOoOo

By Turnover Meeri was progressing well; and L'gal spoke to her seriously.

"I know a lot of apprentices begin at Turnover, it is the main new intake; but if you'll put up with being a little late to the Harper Hall, I think another month's concentrated study with us will more than catch you up. There are still a few basics you stumble on; and I've yet to break you of your bad habits of fingering with playing the fiddle that would get you into trouble. But it is up to you – would you prefer to start under the cover of others but still ill prepared, or would you like to be sure and be able to keep up and more?"

Meeri considered.

It was remarkably nice of L'gal to give her the choice, and she told him so.

"I appreciate you letting me decide" she said "And whichever I choose someone is going to pick on me I expect, whether for being late or for not knowing enough. I guess from the way you worded it your recommendation is to go later than sooner?"

He shrugged.

"You're going to be feeling a little bit of a loner for being a girl – there's another couple of girl apprentices by the way, Dorasha, though she's older than you,, and Kitiara who's probably transferring here in any case. And I think you'll find your feet quicker if you only have to worry about making friends and allies and not as well about making the grade – and too, those who pick on you can only do so much if they can't taunt you for any failure. You're a hard little worker and you've come on no end; I think in another month you'll hold your own against the best prepared and most talented of the boys entering in a few days' time."

Meeri flushed with pleasure!

"Thank you Master L'gal" she said formally.

He grinned at her.

"The best thanks I can have is you doing well, little cousin" he said, indicating a close of formality. "Are you starting to note down your own tuning?"

She nodded.

"And there's a joint thing I did with Lyseder and Kullana" she said.

L'gal whistled in surprise.

"Kullana likes you then. She almost never tunes with other people" he said.

"Well it kind of just happened" said Meeri. "I remembered my firestone bagging thing like you told me to, and went back to it while we were helping the weyrlings: and Lyseder and Kullana started adding parts, and so did Snatch, and Lyseder made us help him write it all down afterwards. It's much better than my original twiddle."

"Show me" he demanded.

Meeri fished around in her work bag; and L'gal studied the sheet she handed him.

"Yes, it has Lyseder's stamp of maturity – I know that's a strange thing to say when he's turns younger than you, but he's had adversity to make him take tuning more seriously than you" he added.

Meeri nodded; she knew Lyseder's story.

"He and Kullana are so talented" she said.

"You too, my child; but you've been as neglected as Lyseder in your own way and learned so many bad habits. It's still essentially your piece though and see, Lyseder has put your name to it to credit you, naming himself and Kullana as crafting variations. You can use this as a basis to craft your own variations with a clear conscience, it hasn't been usurped" L'gal told her.

"Thank you! I didn't know if that was allowed" said Meeri.

"I'll make a copy if I may of clear evidence for those two in variation and part crafting, to go in their dockets of work when I submit them as Journeymen; a long time away, but every piece adds" he explained.

Meeri nodded eagerly.

"Now I've seen what can be done I want to work more into my own tunes to add parts" she said eagerly.

L'gal grinned.

"Good girl….we're getting there then. Again, I'd like to see you with a few more tools at your disposal – musical tricks as your father would style it – before you do much, in case you spoil these for inexperience and become downhearted. I THINK you've got an instinct to add counterpoint and harmony but I'm not the great Tunecraft teacher Master Domick is, and nor is T'rin for all his clever music. For him, like you, it's so instinctive that he can't always say WHY he does something that works. Me? I'm a competent tunecrafter of good, singable songs and I can give you the basics. Master Domick can give you the flourish and panache to make your tunes real music."

Meeri was looking confused.

"He'll make me clean out the firepits?" she asked.

L'gal laughed, working out what had confused her.

"Panache, my dear, not ash pan. It means…. It means like T'rin when he's showing off. Style, showmanship, verve, élan, the ability to present your work."

"Oh" said Meeri. "I've learned lots of words from I'linne but that wasn't one of them."

"Of course not!" laughed L'gal "It's only got two syllables!"

oOoOo

Meeri set herself to study even harder, mostly under T'rin and F'lim, the young senior apprentice having also had to be broken of bad habits learned from a father and uncles who played instinctively. The sevendays flew past!

T'rin received a message carried by a green firelizard one day in class and roared with laughter as he read it.

"Heh, whaddya know?" whooped the Journeyman Blue Rider. "Our Horgey's only gone and Impressed at Fort Weyr from the tiers and become H'gey…" his eyes narrowed as he read further. "N'ton's let him take Blue Brieth back to the Harper Hall because he's afraid of incidents happening to a cripple… H'gey will be coming back here. Well we'll be glad to have him home – and as a Rider – but oh BOY! RUCTIONS!" he said.

"You didn't ought to talk of ructions in front of scrubby apprentices" said Kullana virtuously.

"Harpers know when to be discreet, don't you?" said T'rin. "We're family here, bratling, and you'd soon hear about it from Pilgra and T'bor sounding off if I didn't let you know first and the lot of you would pick up rumours and make up the rest. Keep it in the family. You know that."

Kullana grinned.

T'rin looked at Meeri.

"You just about ready to go to the Harper Hall, sprout?" he asked.

She nodded eagerly.

"I – I think so sir!"

"Good. Be packed in a sevenday; L'gal may as well drop you off when he collects H'gey and Kitiara, she is definitely coming too, kids, and she's an item with H'gey. Great news huh?"

There was a murmur of assent from those who knew the crippled Journeyman.

"Would this momentous occasion prove to be of sufficient auspicious grandeur to lead the Journeyman in granting his apprentices some vacation to celebrate appropriately?" asked I'linne innocently.

"Oh for shell's sake take the rest of the day off do!" said T'rin balling up the message and throwing it at the young Green Rider. "In the face of such loquacious prolixity I could scarcely refuse."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Meeri had cut her unruly black locks to be like her cousin, T'arla, when she first came to the Weyr and was accustomed to trews more than to skirts in any case. L'gal had advised her to be ambiguous about her gender rather than lie outright.

"Meerey spelled –ey at the end would be a fair enough name for a boy" he said "And those young scamps will shorten you to Meer anyway. I've taken the liberty of asking Master Domick to let selected people know; the other female apprentice Dorasha, she has a curtained area at the end of the boys' dormitory that you will share – I think a paying student has moved in there informally too – and she'll look out for you. The boys in there are senior apprentices and good friends of T'rin. Stev is a special student of Master Domick, he can help you with your tunecrafting. Domick's also going to tell an older but not yet senior boy called Braid, who is also from a Holdless background. He's a turn or so older than you perhaps. He has a group of friends, Gavel, who's older yet who did not receive proper preparation, Gwetal, Timmis and Vaek. Gwetal and Timmis have needed extra help, Vaek is a bit of a genius and an imp of mischief. They'll be in some classes with you."

Meeri nodded obediently. She was all ready with her somewhat meagre belongings, less meagre than when she had first come to the Weyr, though!.

Most precious of course was her fiddle that had belonged to her great grandfather, and the flute she had made under T'rin's instruction. She preferred whistling but T'rin had impressed on her the necessity for blending predictable tones when instruments played together and so she had acquiesced. Her clothing was not extensive in quantity but was certainly now of very fair quality, for the Weyr was particular about making sure that its people were well clad.

oOoOo

Flying on Solpeth was as enjoyable the second time as the first and Meeri made sure to thank the Bronze dragon for the trip.

He inclined his head in acknowledgement, then blew hard to ruffle her curls now she had taken off the flying helmet she had been loaned! Meeri grinned at him. She was in no wise nervous around dragons, even a big Bronze like Solpeth, for all that riding one had never entered her ambitions.

She gazed curiously at Journeyman H'gey and his Blue dragonet Brieth; there were plenty of other apprentices and Journeymen and Masters around to see him and the red-haired Kitiara off.

As the passengers handed up belongings to be stowed by L'gal, Meeri found herself appraised by as beautiful a blonde, curly haired lad with huge blue eyes as could be imagined as a Lordling in a Harper tale.

He gave a cheeky grin.

"I say, are you Meeri? I'm Vaek. I'm supposed to help you see your stuff stowed and take you to master Domick when our Journeyman and Our Kit are off."

"You're the imp of mischief, aren't you?" Meeri asked.

Vaek grinned.

"That's me! And a good ally in Laghen, one of the new intake; he's a trader from around Lemos and he's got a few good ideas!"

Meeri grinned.

"I'd better get to know him then" she said "I'm trader-tinker bred myself."

"And own cousin to T'arla who's a sharding good fighter" said Vaek.

"You got to be" said Meeri seriously "Unless you want some beast of a holderman to take your virginity as soon as you're as tall as a runnerbeast's withers. And that goes for boys too with some of them."

"Whoh!" said Vaek. "I guess that's pretty tough! Me, I'm spoilt and soft being craftbred right here; though we do have defence classes. You and Laghen can teach me – I don't want to rely on Braid protecting me all the time" he grinned "He's gone on your cousin is Braid."

"That's tough" shrugged Meeri "She weyrs with Master L'gal – Solpeth's Rider there."

"Yeah. He'll get over it" said Vaek cheerfully. "He's just real proud another Holdless did so well. It ain't the same for Laghen, see: he can do Holdless but his father's a Journeyman trader so he's accredited."

Meeri nodded, absently reflecting that for a craft-bred Harper Vaek mangled the language worse than her father even. Familiarity evidently did breed contempt! She hoped that Laghen would not look down on her for being of a family that was anything BUT accredited. Her Uncle Poley now carried a written warranty from Lord Warder Lytol of Ruatha commending him as an honest, honourable, trustworthy man, and it had been endorsed by L'gal as Bronze Rider; but her father had no such document. Nor was he ever likely to get one. Meeri had grown up believing that stealing opportunistically from Holderfolk was natural and somehow 'fair'. Her education in the Harperweyr had challenged THAT belief too. And yet she felt more at home, more welcome, in the Harperweyr than with her own folk.

She felt hot tears start and blinked hard as Solpeth took off in one fluid movement with his passengers who were going home to the Harperweyr.

Vaek punched her arm lightly.

"Yeah, that's it, keep it inside, don't show the bullies if you're homesick" he said. "Good man, er,,,,,"

"Just call me Meer and treat me like a boy" said Meeri.

Vaek grinned.

"All right!" he agreed. "C'mon, let's get you settled in!"

oOoOo

The dormitory was plain but not unwelcoming with gay patchwork quilts on all the beds. At the end were a pair of plain, but well-made screens with canvas stretched between the frames onto which were tacked the drum measures.

"T'rin made the screens, they say" said Vaek with studied nonchalance to hide the awe in his tone. "Wish I knew him properly. I guess you do?"

She grinned.

"He's a hard taskmaster but a good teacher" she said "And kind too. And real good with his baby girl."

"Bet she'll be a Harper-Rider one day" said Vaek. "Y'know your drum measures?"

Meeri nodded.

It was virtually impossible to AVOID knowing the drum measures around so many logicators!

oOoOo

Master Domick was a stocky man with crisp dark hair and deep brown eyes in a face yet unlined; Meeri guessed him to be what would be in a tinker family to be middle years, though of course settled people lived longer and with less signs of ageing than traderfolk and the Holdless, or even cotholders scratching a precarious and ageing existence right on the edge, where sixty turns was old age. And they said that Dragonriders aged even less obviously .Meeri was of the opinion that music and joy kept you young; but of course he must be quite old if he was a Master, regardless of his eager, almost boyish look as he dismissed Vaek.

"L'gal tells me you've finally accepted that you have a rare talent, lad – er, my dear" he said.

Meeri grinned shyly.

"If it's easier to call me lad or boy, I'm not really bothered, Master" she said "I guess I'll know I'm getting half trained when you can also remember my name."

Domick gave a crack of laughter.

"I can see T'rin's hand in the preparing of you" he said "No, maybe it's not that; you speak plain I think, and you give as good as you get."

"Yes sir; naturally" said Meeri.

Domick pulled a face.

"And that's also encouraged at High Reaches Weyr," he said, "but here you will find some Masters and Journeymen will think you intend insolence and will punish you for it, because there are enough boys who DO intend blunt words and meeting the eyes as insolent. I would advise you to be more…..circumspect…..than you are accustomed to be."

Meeri nodded.

"Treat them like Holderfolk with knots of tried and trusted in other words" she said. "Ready to see slights and wanting to put the scum down?" scorn had crept into her voice.

"That's not…." he paused "There are perhaps some ready to hit down apprentices they think are uppity, my child. They are NOT a majority. Let discretion be your watchword; and if as a precaution it means treating Masters and Journeymen as you suggest, then do so until you find your feet. Masters after all are considered the same level as The Ranking, or Bronze Rides. It were wise to remember that."

Meeri grinned.

"I hardly think, Master Domick, you or the other Masters would relish being treated the way I'd treat any Ranking brat I got alone."

"Oh?" he looked down his large, well chiselled nose.

"Throw 'em in the nearest midden" said Meeri cheerfully. "That's the Weyr way too with useless clots who think being a candidate means looking decorative."

"Heerrrhrrrrumph" said Domick, clearing his throat hastily. "No, that's not to be recommended – for Ranking students OR Masters. Though if you and your classmates suffer from….slights…. how you rub off corners I suppose is your own business so long as you accept any er, consequences."

She flashed him another grin.

"I could care less for beatings, Master, I'm used to them from m'father."

Domick pursed his lips.

"We do NOT do beatings here" he said. "Any teaching Journeyman or Master is entitled to cuff an inattentive student; and I understand that most apprentices at the Drumheights are wary of Master Olodkey's drumsticks, otherwise we do not encourage violent ways of enforcing discipline."

"I guess that's because there's the threat of the worst punishment of all – expulsion and being exiled from music" said Meeri. "But you'd not expel apprentices for fighting?"

"Only if they made it a habit to pick on the weaker" grunted Domick. "Now! To work – show me your latest tunes."

Obediently Meeri fished around in her working bag and took out a sheaf of leaves.

"I haven't finished all of them as rounded tunes, sir" she said "Only L'gal said to jot down everything, and I could finish them other times…. He gets waxy if I make something up and don't remember it later."

"And so shall I" said Domick. "Even if it IS unimportant, that you can decide when looking it over more objectively later. Yes, some of these are charming er, twiddles, worth working up but perhaps of only ordinary, moderate merit; some have a great deal of potential. A great deal. If very raw" he passed back a couple of leaves. Meeri looked surprised.

"You like these? T'rin did too, and Kullana, but Mi'a reckoned they weren't very singable…."

"Music does not HAVE to be singable!" cried the composition Master. "Menolly never wrote a thing that was unsingable; but there is also plenty of room for music to be listened to and appreciated too without having to sing along!"

"I heard a piece once when we were doing mending work in a Hold in Crom" Meeri ventured. "It was about Lessa's trip to collect the Oldtimers, it's not very popular these days I guess, and I don't think the Harper made the best of it, but it was so haunting…..it's what made me want to be a Harper one day, whatever my father said."

"You liked that?" he asked intently.

She nodded.

"More than anything else…I wish I could hear it played properly, I don't really think that one harp, two fiddles, a flute and a gitar could do it justice. And the bodhran was played by a Hold daughter who could hold a beat like a watchwher holds a glow-tossing contest. My father thought it was awful; but he likes country dances better, and was prejudiced because one fiddler had joint-ail and wasn't always on note."

"I wrote that" said Domick.

Her eyes widened.

"You did? Oh Master , will it be possible to ever hear it played properly?" she gasped.

"Hmph. Like you said, it is politically inexpedient to remember that the Oldtimers did, actually, save us all; and in fact that three Oldtimer Weyrleaders and many of their Oldtimer Riders continue to do so" said Domick dryly.

"Yes sir. It's like as how the egregious thieves amongst the Holdless give the rest of us a bad name."

"A solecism like 'it's like as how' then trumped with a word like egregious – an excellent word for a very new apprentice and almost worth not telling you off for your grammar" said the Master.

"I'linne" said Meeri by way of explanation for the word. "She uses her vocabulary as a weapon; I half suspect when she first fights Thread she'll try to talk it to death. I learned some marvellous words off of her."

"And you spoil it with further offences like 'off of' you horrible child! Very well, be off with you for now – I want you to settle in and prove yourself beyond the need of Master Morshall's services before I take you on myself. But" he raised a finger "Any time you need a Master, you are one of my special pupils and you may come to me."

"Sir, thank you sir!" Meeri beamed at him.

Domick suppressed a grimace and suddenly wondered if he had, in that rash offer, made a rod for his own back. Still, her tuning showed so much promise, and she was a protégé of two of his favourite former pupils in T'rin and L'gal. He hoped she would not find it necessary to report back to him every incident of daily life. And yet…. Instinct told him that it would not be to whine about difficulties. That firm a chin would soon sort out its own problems, probably with the help of that scrapegrace Vaek and his cronies!


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Dorasha introduced herself to Meeri in the dormitory; and then to the boys on the other side of the screen.

"Varalie sometimes sleeps in here to escape the girls in Dunca's cot" she explained "But she's not a regular apprentice – you have to be better than a boy to be accepted as a girl you know."

"I didn't know" said Meeri. "I thought they were just prejudiced against female Harpers here."

"That too" said Dorasha. "I failed my first application, you know, 'cos our Hold Harper didn't figure out that I needed to learn to play lefthanded. Journeyman Horgey – uh, H'gey – figured out why I was clumsy. He's great! You're from the Harperweyr, aren't you?"

"Yes, but I don't know H'gey except from what the others have told me" said Meeri. "He had left right along the time I arrived, and I got a lift on L'gal's dragon when he came to pick the Journeyman up. You don't mind being a girl on your own?"

"Shellls, I just want music! Besides there was Kit at first, and now I'm settled in. The boys are good friends and don't make a big thing of me being a girl. I guess you feel a bit of a fish out of water because you're younger?"

Meeri nodded.

"Don't worry kid" said Shoris, his adult voice as mellifluous and beautiful as had been his child's golden voice. "We'll do what we did with Kit – just make no mention of what you are and let people assume."

"Thanks" said Meeri.

"Master Domick rates your stuff I hear" said Stev. Show?"

"Hey, bad form to demand like that!" said red-haired Kerill.

"I don't mind" said Meeri, passing over her leaves.

Stev flicked through.

"That's good stuff, if a little raw" he said.

"That, I take it, is Master Domick's favourite word that you've picked up" said Meeri. "He described them the same way."

Stev nodded with a rueful grin. He was almost as short as Meeri and his pale skin and pale blonde hair made him look almost delicate.

"You'll work them up. I envy people like T'rin and you who just dash stuff off because it comes easy. I'm glad you want to clean it up though; I know there's a lot of people out there who can tune but never do bother to record or improve it."

Meeri flushed.

"I had to have it explained to me that it mattered" she said "I just twiddle all the time."

"You got some of Woodcrafter Elissa's printed staves I see" grinned Kerill. "Ah the joys of Weyr connections!"

Meeri was surprised.

"Isn't this issued as standard to apprentices then?" she asked.

Kerill hooted.

"Not hardly! And you SO are going to be in trouble with Master Arnor the archivist with big sprawling handwriting like that – 'do you think hide grows on trees?'" he mimicked the irritable voice of the Master archivist.

"Well leaves of paper do, effectively, don't they?" said Meeri. "The woodcrafters make 'em anyway."

"For shells' sake don't say THAT to him!" warned Kerill "He'll have you on water ration for a sevenday for cheek! Not adjusted to paper yet, our Masterarchivist, afraid it's not as permanent as hide, though he's happy to pass it out for student exercises. We still mostly use our slates though!"

"Is that what they're for? Class lessons? Do we then copy stuff into copybooks later?" asked Meeri.

"Copy books? What are copy books?" demanded Anslas.

Meeri produced her own classwork book, several leaves sewn together, printed on one side with staves and blank on the other side for notes.

"Nice" said Stev. "Trust T'rin to come up with some really efficient way of learning and letting his students keep permanent notes to refer back to. We've no such niceties here, though I betya if he's shown senior work in these to the Masterharper we'll be getting a papermaker who can print staves seconded here soon!"

"I hope so" said Meeri "I hate the noise the slate pencil makes on the slate. I say, T'rin mentioned another of you called Duthi, where's he?"

Embarrassed glances were exchanged.

"Well with T'rin gone, and Ferry out of the dorm as a Journeyman, and H'gey and Kit to go as well, he asked to go home" said Keril uncomfortably. "Didn't think that we would be enough to keep him up to scratch."

"I don't want to be unkind about a long time friend" put in Dorasha "But Duthi's always been pretty negative. And a Harper HAS to be able to be independent. If he can only get through life by leaning on others he's no Harper."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence of tacit agreement.

"He did try HARD" said loyal Anslas.

Meeri felt as a newcomer it was improper for her to comment; but that did rather sound as though the absent Duthi were being damned with faint praise!

oOoOo

At breakfast next morning, she was pounced on by the ubiquitous Vaek and dragged off to meet her classmates. She had already been taken by the other dormitory members to feed her firelizard, Snatch, since they all had their own, courtesy of T'rin!

"There's fourteen in the new intake, you make it fifteen" Vaek said. "Some are wet behind the ears, some are all right. Hey, Laghen, Meer here is from a trader family too, but having Impressed relations has been living in the Weyr so Meer's forgotten how to walk because of those flits dragonback."

Various expressions of envy and jealousy flitted across the faces of the new apprentices near the lad named Laghen.

"Don't you believe a word of this consummate Harper" said Meeri cheerfully. "I've been dragonback twice – once in, once out. And I've been working hard enough in the meantime to stay fit, I can tell you! Even visiting relations aren't allowed to idle in the Weyr, and my cousin had me bagging firestone with the weyrlings until all I could hear was a percussion of 'GRUNT-groan- rattle- THUD'."

That got a laugh and broke the ice.

Meeri was also glad that she was not the only youngster there with a firelizard; another boy had a little brown firelizard who cheeped politely at Snatch.

"What do you call yours?" asked the lad, rather crummily, through a cheese roll.

"Snatch. And I'm Meeri, known as Meer" she said.

"Yeah, that could sound a little effeminate otherwise" said the lad "Some parents just don't think when they put names together. I'm Jaynar and this is Clayboy, 'cos he's the colour of terracotta clay. I wanted to be a Harper anyway, but I reckon he'd have got me thrown out of the Pottercraft Hall anyway, 'cos he WILL help!"

"They showed me how to train Snatch in the Weyr…. I guess you get shown here too because of Journeyman Menolly?" asked Meeri.

"We get a lot of instructions anyhow" said Jaynar. "So you know Vaek?"

"By reputation through the Harperweyr and from being talked at by him yesterday!" she laughed, filling her plate with bread and good hot cheese rolls. "Say, do these have bacon in?" she prodded one.

"Some do, some don't" it was Laghen who answered her. "Some people don't like it" he shrugged. "Their loss."

Laghen was a tall, well-knit lad with brown hair and merry eyes; Jaynar was as tall, but skinny, his wrists appearing from his sleeves as mute testimony to a growing spurt.

"So how come you're late, then?" asked another, stockier, lad.

Meeri shrugged casually.

"Family business" she said. That could mean anything, including bereavement; and there were some uncomfortable shuffles as no-one quite liked to ask her to elaborate.

"How come you got a firelizard?" yet another boy asked. "Jaynor's father is a Master Potter at Tillek Hold and Master Idorolan gifted him several for fine pots, why did a TRADER brat get one?" his voice whined.

Laghen scowled and so did Meeri.

"Don't you miscall my family, you whining brat you" said Meeri "I got my firelizard 'cos there's plenty available in a Weyr and my cousins thought I might find him useful. That's the luck of life, my friend, like it or not."

"Oh never mind Irtul" said another, cheerful looking and weatherbeaten lad with tow coloured hair. "He looks for slights and things to gripe about as a hobby."

"You shut your mouth, Dekello, you porcine herder!" snapped Irtul.

"He's also got the imagination of the average ovine" countered Dekello gaily "For how can you turn an insult of something that happens to be true? I'm from Keroon and we raise porcines as our main Hold beast, 'cos there's nothing like porcines for turning kitchen waste into flesh. You can use everything except the squeak and I wager the bacon you're enjoying came from the back of a Keroonian hog."

"It's good wherever it came from" said Meeri. "I know nothing about porcines except that you get whipped for racing them."

Dekello chuckled.

"That's first egg's own truth!" he said.

"WELL! Sounds like you're not as serious as you look!" said Laghen, with satisfaction. "I guess if Vaek likes you, you'd not be."

"I really, really want to learn" said Meeri "But I wasn't planning on taking life too seriously betweenwhiles."

Her serious application at the Weyr made her feel like letting of steam if she could do so and still keep up! She thought that she would have to see where she stood in class before she decided how much mischief she could let herself get into, in an attempt to catch the last shreds of a childhood that had been more full of knocks than treats.

oOoOo

"Are we all sorted out with those exercises Master Morshal set?" asked a tanned, black-haired boy "I'm Yathel, Meer, and I got picked by those who want to progress past Master Morshal to see all the exercises were sorted out, and we hear each other. It was Journeyman Ferry's idea" he explained.

Meeri knew enough to know that it had originally been T'rin's idea of self-help with Ferry and the others she now dormed with.

"Sounds like a good idea" she said "Sign me up for it!"

He grinned with flashing white teeth.

"Pity the dorm's full and they put you in somewhere else" he said.

"Yeah, I'm in with a bunch of big boys, but they've been pretty decent" said Meeri "Their head of dorm is called Kerill."

Yathel's brow cleared from the worried frown it had begun to assume.

"Oh Kerill's a friend of Ferry, you'll be all right with them, they even let them have the one and olnly female apprentice sleep there, curtained off of course!" he added hastily. "Can't be much fun. Girls are such pains, though Dorasha's decent enough I suppose, and so was Kit; and Journeyman Menolly is real nice!"

Meeri laughed.

"You mean girls are a pain except the ones that aren't?" she said. "My cousin T'arla is pretty good you know."

"You wouldn't catch them having loads of female Green Riders at Benden, not contracting females wither – it ain't natural" said Irtul.

"Huh, that's where you're wrong" said Meeri. "My Uncle Poley knows old ballads about female Green Riders with contractions and L'gal collected all the songs he knew and took them to the Masterharper, so there! And Benden has ONE female Green Rider too, so they don't think it odd. They've just not encouraged it as much as High Reaches has and if the dragons think it's all right then it's all right. Not that you were asked your opinion" she added.

"Hear hear!" said Jaynar. "The dragonmen of High Reaches do a fardling good job and the ladies' wing don't leave much behind for groundcrews to mop up."

"Yeah? And you'd know how?" jeered Irtul.

"Shards, I've walked sweep, I'm almost thirteen turns old you know, I'm no babe" scoffed Jaynar.

"Are we let to walk sweep here?" asked Meeri.

"We have to put our names down as willing" said Laghen "It's only Jay, Dek, Yathek and me that have, and Nierel over there. We've not had Fall yet. Doorm doesn't for all that he's seabred, nor Kimmet even though he's the cousin by marriage to Lord Asgenar as you might guess by his Lemos name" scorn slipped into his voice.

Nieral, a tough looking boy, nodded; Doorm, a dreamy faced lad, shrugged; and darkly handsome Kimmet also lifted a shoulder.

"Why should I risk myself when I'm not required to?" he drawled lazily "No trees here for people to fuss about, none of my business."

"Huh" said Yathel "We can do without people like him as can't stir their noble selves. Those of us that will walk sweep pretty much cover the self help group too, we also have Lantar, who has too good an imagineation of what might happen to face the thought of Thread and that's his business; and Corbret who's been taught you don't go out until you're Turned fifteen and he's a good little boy who always obeys daddy. And Doorm would never hear the siren if he was thinking about his work."

The boy Corbret stuck out a tongue for the imputations on his obedient habits; the lad indicated as Lantar had paled at the very mention of Threadl and Doorm smiled good naturedly.

"It's ugly" he said in a sweet high voice "And I don't like ugly things. It's why I want to throw porridge in Irtul's face to make it look better; but I shall wait until I'm confirmed apprentice so I can't get expelled so easily" and he smiled brightly.

Irtul seethed; and the other boys laughed.

"He's so well out of normal life most of the time and in a dream world of his own I forget Doorm can come out with the most outrageous things!" grinned Laghen. "Ah well! Off to the merry smiles of Master Morshall!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

It was rapidly apparent that the class fell into those with real talent; and those without. Two boys not in the self-help group, Bargal and Jeem, progressed happily without it, Jeem exhibiting less than patience with the slower class members. Laghen was plainly the cleverest boy there and able to use his brains where his talent was not so great as Bargal and Jeem, which left him time to lark about in class. Doorm was one of the class leaders as well, but he at least tried to help his fellows. To her surprise, Meeri found the lesson easy, covering timing and extra marks above the stave to indicate slower, faster, quieter or louder music. The lesson involved singing a simple, well known song of Menolly's, putting in the instructions as written even though they were not normally used with this piece, the notation on the board and the instructions changed by the Master to obtain different renditions of it. The self-help group kept up fairly well, but a couple of the boys, Kimmet and Lantor, were having real trouble. It was on Lantor, the sensitive boy from Crom, that Master Morshal vented his irritation, snarling at him an shouting staccato questions that the boy had no hopes of answering so flustered had he become; while the rest were supposed to be copying out more notation from the board to learn.

Meeri scratched on a piece of paper from her pouch,

"_squeak slate pencils in unison, pass it on"_

Soon the apprentices were writing in a concerted rhythm, their pencils all squeaking loud enough to drown out Master Morshall's wrath.

The Master, livid, banged on his desk.

"KEEP that horrible noise down!" he roared.

"Sorry sir!" they all chorused.

The bell rang to change classes; it had at least been a small victory.

"C'mon Lantor, we have a little while in hand, we'll go over that" said Meeri "Won't we chaps?"

"Rather" said Laghen. "How can you NOT see it, Lan?"

Lantor's eyes started to fill again.

"Not you too!" he said bitterly.

"Heh, pothooks are a pain" said Meeri "You gotta learn the way they use funny words; same as people in different parts of Pern use different words for the same thing."

"DO they?" asked Lantor, interested out of his distress.

"Shards, yes! Lots of people say 'ferreting around' for searching; Benden say 'tunnelcatting' 'cos they call ferrets 'tunnelcats'; up north in the Reaches they say 'fossicking' and in Ruatha they 'Birl out'. So it's just the same as learning that 'andanty' is slow down and 'allegro' is fast. I just think of runnerbeasts: Allegro is a smooth sounding smooth racer but Andanty is a fat, lazy burro. If you remember that, the rest is easy."

"Oh THANK you Meer!" said Lantor "I never could think how to remember before!"

Meeri shrugged.

"Thank m'Cousin T'arla" she said. "She came up with it to help me with my struggle with directions and pothooks. I like the louder-softer signs; think of them as a mouth that's opening more for louder, or a wide one that's closing."

"What's the dot under the half circle?" Lantor wanted to know.

"Oh that's an eye under an eyebrow to wink at the conductor to let him know he can play silly so-and-so's" said Meeri "And have you hold the note as long as he feels like, regardless of how long it's written."

"Now THAT's a handy way to look at it" approved Dekello. "I vote we scrounge extra bubbly pies for Meer!"

"Seconded!" said Lantor. They went off laughing to gitar practice!

oOoOo

Gitar was not Meeri's favourite instrument, but she had been well drilled by her Harperweyr tutors, and was, besides, used to the quick changing of fingering on her fiddle. And she was glad that her fiddle lived in a dormitory regularly patrolled by firelizards. She had heard stories of dirty tricks and broken instruments, and it was the only link she had to a great grandfather she barely remembered but who had given her her first lessons on it at just four turns old. What she did recall was how he had made the fiddle sing; and remembering him she suddenly recalled him saying that he regretted that his father had never let him come to the Harper Hall!

She faltered suddenly in her gitar playing and earned a rebuke from the journeyman teaching the class.

After class it was Lantor's turn to show sympathy.

"What happened, Meer? Are you all right?" he asked.

Meeri nodded.

"My mind drifted to an old memory….it made me suddenly think some rather sad thoughts" she said "People can be wicked sometimes."

Lantor gave her a quick, scared look.

"Someone's tried to hurt you?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Something one of my kin told me" she said "C'mon, I'm better now, let's get those bubbly pies!"

oOoOo

Meeri was young enough to let good food take the edge off her sour thoughts; and spent the afternoon playing her fiddle for yet another Journeyman, where she was quite transported and felt closer than ever to her great-grandfather.

Journeyman Bestor was quite startled at the verve and skill of his newest class member; he disliked changes and had given her deliberately a more difficult piece than the others were playing by way of punishment for daring to disrupt his routine; as no satisfactory reason, like illness, had been given for her late start.

As it happened he did Meeri a favour; she would have been bored and irritated by the pieces the others were tackling!

Impatient and occasionally unfair Bestor may have been; but he also loved his chosen instrument and knew when it was being played with instinctive virtuosity. He waited until Meeri had finished the piece and asked,

"Where would you normally be on the second period of this morning?"

"Gitar lesson sir" said Meeri.

"Are you particularly fond of gitar?" Bestor asked.

"No sir, I hate it" said Meeri honestly "I know it can have subtlety but I've yet to find any."

Bestor hid a smile, That mirrored his feelings too well – though the new child could not know that.

"Then I'll see Journeyman Teller and explain that you won't be in his class again" he said "You will report to Third Turn fiddle studies instead. Here's the music they are preparing; take it away and study it for next sevenday's lesson."

Meeri glanced down at the score and brightened.

"It's by Master Domick, isn't it?" she said.

Bestor was surprised.

"Yes it is. How did you know that, boy? It's not been performed yet!"

"Well I've heard other music by him and it's his style" said Meeri.

"Hmph" said Bestor, not at all displeased. "If you've picked THAT up this quickly you'll go far. Go away and practise it; I'll want you up to speed for next lesson. And the rest of you idle lot can TRY to struggle through some nursery songs for me" he added to remind the rest of the class that Meeri's virtuosity was not going to get them out of working!

oOoOo

Meeri took herself and the music up to Master Domick's room and knocked.

"Come" his deep voice called, and she entered.

He was alone.

"Meeri? Sent for discipline? Or in trouble already? I heard a slate pencil concert, was that your doing?"

Meeri grinned.

"Never confess if it can't be proven" she said glibly. "No, not trouble; I got told to join a different fiddle class and was sent away to practise new music…..I suppose there are practice rooms but I don't know where yet so I thought I'd be cheeky and ask if I could practise in here today. I know it's forbidden to do so in dormitories."

"And for good reason; or some youngsters would drive their fellows half _Between_ sawing and scraping or twanging or squeaking their bad notes" Domick said. "There's something else, though, isn't there?" he added perceptively.

She nodded.

"I – I was so glad my great granddad, Bavol, gave me his fiddle: his father stopped him from coming to the Harper Hall an oh, Master Domick, what a waste, 'cos he could make it TALK!" she said "And – and my father said, if I let those Harpers at the Weyr teach me Harper tricks I was no daughter of his!"

"It still goes on then" said Domick sadly.

"I – please, I went to the Weyr on the pretext of Search, I belong to the Weyr don't I? It's for T'bor to order my future, not my father? That IS the law isn't it?"

Domick nodded.

"For those taken on Search between the ages of twelve and Fourteen Turns the Weyr is their guardian. It is also the right of any individual over the age of twelve turns to seek acceptance of the Weyr OR APPRENTICESHIP. As the apprenticeship has been accepted, your father cannot lawfully stop you from choosing your path nor take you from it. You belong not to the WEYR now actually, but to the Harper Hall where your apprenticeship has been lawfully transferred for the period of your training. This is your RIGHT and is laid down in the Charter – along with your responsibility to do as well as you can do for your craft and accept lawful discipline from those higher in the craft. Ask Master Arnor if you may see the Charter when you go to study with him; you are required to learn its clauses in broad even if not by heart, for they are also embedded in such teaching songs as the Duty Song" he said, putting an awkward arm about her shoulders to comfort her, because she was crying tears of grief, relief, and shame for her family.

"Is it so wrong to hate my father?" she whispered.

"No child. Not when he tries to take away what you are; as he tried to poison T'arla's mind and nearly spoiled HER chances" said Domick. "Now then! You'll make the floor damp if you cry much more and while Master Robinton may be a good sailor, I am not!"

That sally coaxed a smile from Meeri.

"May – may I play to practise in here?" she asked.

"Do" he said.

He was not prepared for what she was playing; and listened dumfounded to the trueness of her rendition in spirit, if off on the occasional note.

"How long did you study this?" he asked when she had finished.

"Oh I glanced all through it on the way up the stairs" said Meeri "It's wonderful now I can READ music, it was worth slogging my guts out over that hard seven or eight sevendays."

"Do you mean to tell me you've learned to read music well enough to play that in less than two months?" Domick asked.

"Big incentive" she said, tossing her curly head. "Have I done it so wrong then?" she asked, suddenly anxious.

"My dear child, you did it better than some here who have been reading music for TURNS" he said. "Yes, you were inaccurate in this passage here" he pointed it out "And on the pizzicato passage; but practice will sort that out."

"But it's your music and it's so logical and beautiful" said Meeri.

"How do you know it's mine? That copy's not marked" he said sharply.

"It feels like yours. Like the Oldtimer thing" said Meeri.

"Incredible" he shook his head. "Incredible. And incredible that your fool of a father should….. but then there are fools of fathers all over, Journeyman Menolly's included."

"And Lyseder's grandfather, and Mi'a's parents and if you come to that, Carlinna's parents only backwards for giving only praise and no constructive criticism to her drawing; and then there's C'lara's bovine headed father. I really don't think people ought to be allowed to be parents without a certificate of competency" she added.

Domick laughed.

"But they'd have to train on some poor child…. Besides, what do you call competent? Plenty can feed and clothe and see to the needs of their children; to recognise extraordinary emotional needs required, I suppose, extraordinary parents."

"I like the Weyr way of fostering people with those of similar interests and encouraging secondary skills" said Meeri.

"It does seem to have its merits" said Domick, dryly. "Those brought up in a crafthall are expected to have talent too and are supposed to absorb knowledge through the skin almost…."

"Doesn't always work, though, does it sir? Else Corbret would head our class for being bred here and Jaynor would be a potter."

"And stupid parents still abound, to push too hard or conversely to get jealous of a child's ability" said Domick dryly "No system is perfect; the Charter recognises the Right of anyone old enough to choose to move between Hold, Craft and Weyr. And that is why. Trouble is, with Harpers discouraged in the Long Interval, for, er, 'singing lies' about the return of Thread, and actually attacked by Fax's men, we have still not re-established the level of education of the previous Pass; and I mean general standards of education, never mind knowledge of rights and duties. Once all were literate."

"And that's what we're supposed to do, isn't it? raise the standard of education? Does – does that mean my duty will be to return to living Holdless to train my kin?"

Domick stared.

"Great shells, no, child! It would be a waste of your composing – and performing – talents! Any moderately competent Journeyman Harper could do that; I have FAR greater plans for you!"

She looked apprehensive.

"Now I'm scared that the potential you see won't pan out and that I'll let you down" she said reproachfully. "I'm old to start here, I know that, I'm Turned fourteen, you know. I've got a lot to catch up on."

"Not so much as you may think. You may bring your fiddle up to me to practise that piece, and if you like you may leave it here and draw a practice one until you have built an adequate second instrument."

She brightened.

"Oh may I? how KIND you are, Master Domick!" she flung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

"HRRUMPH! Now then!" he said "Cheeky brat, and you expect to be taken for a boy when you do girlie things like that hey?"

She dropped back, her expression closed.

"I – I'm sorry."

He flicked her cheek with a gentle and apologetic finger.

"I didn't mean to upset you, Meeri!" he said hastily "I'm just teasing – and pointing out that it's unwise to let your pose as a boy slip even in private, hmm? Besides, I do have SOME dignity to maintain" he added.

She smiled hesitantly at him, and he smiled back.

"I'll come again when I have a free period then?" she asked.

"No, come after the evening meal; I know I've no pupils then. I'll probably be working while you practise, and only notice if you go wrong" he said, firmly maintaining distance.

The poor child seemed as though she had been starved of affection; but it would not do to let her make a substitute father of him. Certainly not until she had established herself as his own apprentice!


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Meeri soon settled into a routine.

Master Morshall could not fault her, nor Journeyman Rokayas teaching drum measures for in that she was already as good as any senior apprentice, or even journeyman. That it was custom in the dormitory to speak by beating measures as practice helped too, and the Masters were inclined to turn deaf ears to such phrases as

_**DDD**__ Irtul is a whiney little fart __**DDD**_ banged enthusiastically with a wooden spoon on the bucket of firelizard meat. Words like 'fart' had to be spelled out, which was all good practice.

Meeri's record with other masters was variable.

Master Arnor could not fault her keenness to learn history, but was appalled by her handwriting and was decidedly snippy over her offer to send for more leaves of paper to make up for it! Master Jerint was glad she had received SOME grounding in instrument crafting by one of his more competent ex pupils in the person of T'rin, but the Master Instrumentcrafter told Meeri firmly that she would need to work harder to make the grade.

This left Meeri in a similar situation to Dorasha who was also catching up a total lack of starting knowledge of instrument crafting, and who had to work with the first turn apprentices. At least it gave the girls something in common to discuss; but as neither was particularly interested in what Kerill called 'girlie subjects' like clothes, jewels, dancing and young men, neither got on the other's nerves.

"I do like to dance" said Meeri "Reckon I could win a jigging competition."

"That's different!" said Dorasha "It's getting silly about dancing with boys, he means."

"Oh that" said Meeri. "I know tinker dances though; they're supposed to send men crazy. When I need to, I shall use 'em."

"Heh, teach me in case I ever need to?" asked Dorasha. "Nothing wrong with being prepared, even if we DON'T want to dance with men yet."

"Sure!" agreed Meeri equably.

She sang in the same class as Dorasha too; Master Shonagar trained boy trebles and females together for chorus roles, and was not displeased with Meeri's basic voice. Her breath control had been suitably modified by L'gal not to irritate the big, flamboyant Master, and if she was never going to be given solos, nor was she likely to cause him irritation.

On the whole, Meeri found herself level with or ahead of her class.

In some respects that was a shock, and so she confided to Domick.

"And why is it a shock?" he asked.

"Because people like Kullana and Lyseder are so far ahead of me and they're not as old as the youngest apprentice here" she replied. "Garven and Garald could best most of them and they've not the talent in their whole bodies that Lyseder and Kullana have in their little fingers."

Domick shrugged.

"Fate is never kind or fair in handing out talent" he said "And when there is the least of talents a small class such as the Harperweyr has may bring it on if there's the hard work to go with it on the part of the apprentice; and some individual attention draws to extraordinary heights those of outstanding talent, which is the reason behind taking special students of those with greater talent than usual. However, regardless of situation and level of talent, how you use what you have is what is important. Who's the most talented in your class?"

"Laghen without a doubt" said Meeri promptly.

"And he gets top marks all the time?" asked Domick.

"No, because…." She stopped.

"Because he finds it more amusing to do things like fill all the horns with liquefied lyesoap, extravagant little squab that he is, than to study his lessons" said Domick, dryly.

Meeri grinned.

The soapy expressions on the faces of the horn players who were practising outside for it being a fine day, and the beautiful bubble that had emerged from one horn had been quite priceless! As a trader whose kin were based in Lemos, getting lyesoap had not been a problem for the resourceful Laghen; he had been hoarding small ends from his family's store for just such a purpose for more than a turn in anticipation of his apprenticeship, begging the bits that were too small to continue to use from holderwomen to whom his family sold new bars of soap.

"Brat" said Domick. "One of those horn players was violently sick you know. Have you no sympathy?"

"No not really Master; had you not seen how he was stuffing himself at breakfast?" said Meeri. "What goes down must come up when you're THAT greedy, two bowls of porridge, four cheese and bacon rolls, two meat rolls and two redfruit he ate. You can't play properly on that full a stomach" she added virtuously.

Domick was inclined to agree, but was not about to say so!

"I've half a mind to put you on water rations you heartless little squab" he said. "But I was making a point – that Laghen has talent but misuses it."

"He wouldn't if the system let someone like you put his nose to the grindstone in those things he finds interesting, not the easy kid-stuff that bores him" said Meeri shrewdly. "I can take it because being able to do the exercises is still wonderful to me, but HE needs stretching."

Domick nodded.

"I'd already come to that conclusion," he said, "and when he's finished de-soaping the horns, he's going to find himself a LOT busier."

"Oh good! May I tell him?" asked Meeri.

"No you may NOT, you dreadful child. And the extra work was NOT going to be issued to him by way f reward as you seem to think!"

"Oh!" she said "But there's so much to learn, it's a treat to get more!"

"Are you trying to talk YOUR way into extra lessons?" he growled.

She grinned.

"Well, I was part of dyeing pasta grey and dropping it off the fireheights to see if we could make Journeyman Teller jump, 'cos he's so pompous" she said, hopefully.

Domick had a coughing fit.

"That's not original" he accused.

"No, only Vaek and co put it in people's beds. I thought it'd be MUCH more effective dropped from above."

"Hmm, and with your background, making you watch Thread for real is no punishment."

"I'm walking sweep tomorrow, sir; I put my name down. There's several of us" said Meeri. "I think any adult who doesn't walk sweep unless they've a total funk about it that makes them ill are cowards; it's the easy way out to hide behind shutters and doesn't support the dragonmen."

He looked surprised at her information.

"Well if you first turners put your feet where your mouths are to walk sweep at your tender turns I can maybe – just maybe – forgive a lot. And frankly some adults are needed to stay within to prevent the less courageous apprentices from panicking. Some of us do however do our bit, in rotation to uphold our contract with the dragonriders you know. Well, I WILL be posting you extra lessons, and will you stop grinning from ear to ear about it, you pestilential brat, it was NOT a reward!" he added.

oOoOo

Generally speaking it was the older journeymen and some masters who walked sweep; and some too careful of their fingers to want to risk them.

"Huh, that's the point of carrying agenothree to stick on any Threadscore" said Meeri "And we don't even go out during Fall, not until after, and anyone who picks ups score then has to be careless."

"Us traders have seen leading edge come and Pass dozens of times" said Laghen. "Under dragons it's not too bad if you know how to use flamethrowers and have a well disciplined line. And load of agenothree in case of accidents."

"You don't go out DURING Fall so you?" said Dekello.

Laghen shrugged.

"Not usually until the trailing edge siren goes, not unless we see a tunnel start, then someone goes to sear it out while others cover. I'd not want to ride a dragon up in the thick of it, but I can cope seeing it."

"Your family's likely to have access to plenty of agenothree too" said Meeri. "My cousin Ch'vul – Chavul he was then – had to burn it out of himself, burned his hand to the bone."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Anyway, we're ready when the siren goes" said Jaynar hastily.

oOoOo

Jaynar was horrified at the amount of Thread the ground crew had to clear.

"What are they THINKING of?" he cried. "Are the Weyr down on numbers? Look, there's only a half dozen Greens and three Queens in the Queens' wing going back to the Weyr, they must be depleted!"

"And who died and made YOU Weyrleader, youngster?" asked a Journeyman sharply.

"Well T'BOR wouldn't let it be that badly done" said Jaynor, stubbornly. "We get MUCH better coverage in Tillek from High Reaches Weyr."

He earned himself a two day water diet for criticising dragonmen; and refused stubbornly to apologise.

"Well, I'll take the same punishment, Journeyman, for agreeing with him" said Meeri "'Cos I come from High Reaches Weyr and I think T'bor is brilliant; and the female wing is tops and wouldn't fiddle-fart about like this lot."

The Journeyman was later heard to complain that it was impossible to discipline apprentices for calling down dragonmen when they praised other dragonmen to the skies!

Master Robinton himself interviewed the unrepentant pair.

"I suppose," said Meeri, kindly, "that we should be sorry for N'ton 'cos he doesn't have the advantage of having H'llon and K'shon and their radical ideas."

"I – yes, I think your sympathy would be the best attitude to take," agreed the Masterharper with as straight a face as he could muster, "and also a degree of tact and Harper discretion in not pointing it out, hmm? We Harpers fought hard enough to keep the people of Pern respecting dragons. An ill-timed remark of such type could be VERY costly to ALL the Weyrs at this time."

Meeri looked aghast.

"Oh I AM sorry then, Masterharper!" she said, "I never thought about that, only that I had to back the truth of what Jaynor said….."

"Naturally a Harper must always back the truth," said Robinton, "but he must also learn when not to speak it directly! Jaynor?"

"I'm sorry, Masterharper, I was just shocked and spoke out," said Jaynor, "I wouldn't want to cause trouble for any Weyr. Only I wasn't going to retract the truth and they do look like a bunch of half-trained caprines next to the High Reaches people."

"I quite understand that" said Robinton, ignoring the description of N'ton's fighting wings. "You may either keep the water ration punishment or write out neatly in drum notation, 20 times, 'I must think before I speak',"

"Drum notation sir!" they both said quickly.

oOoOo

Meeri wondered frankly how most of the other apprentices could stand being cooped up under shutters during Threadfall, and when she had finished her punishment duty she went to find Master Domick to ask him.

She found him occupied with Stev, who was busy re-crafting for – by Domick's comments – the third or fourth time, some composition of his own to meat the Tunemaster's stringent requirements.

"What?" barked Domick.

"Sorry sir" said Meeri "I thought lessons for the day had finished; it was only a social call."

Domick grunted.

"I'm having extra lessons" said Stev.

"Oh, what did you get caught doing?" asked Meeri ingenuously.

Domick glowered at her.

"Not ALL Apprentices get extra lessons for being naughty, you abominable brat! Stev has earned the right to be brought on because he's good enough! Go away!"

"Going sir!" said Meeri and exited sharply. She fancied that neither Stev nor the Master were enjoying the lessons given as a reward half so well as miscreants like her and Laghen enjoyed their extra lessons for punishment.

oOoOo

It seemed a shame to waste her free time.

The drum teaching hall was empty, with notation for the second-turners written up on the board with chalk. It was the work of but a moment to erase certain words and substitute others, and Meeri grinned with satisfaction as she slipped away unseen.

Instead of 'Please ask the Benden Weyrleader to send a flight of dragons' the message now read 'Please ask the Benden Weyrleader to chase a flight of wherries'.

She fervently hoped that the teaching Journeyman of the day, whoever he might be, would not notice until it was too late!

She slipped into supper and whispered to Laghen and Jaynor,

"Listen for the second turn drum practice tomorrow morning."

Laghen, smelling faintly of brass and brass-polishing abrasive, brightened.

"Good ol' Meer!" he gloated. "What have you done?"

"Wait and see" was all she would say!

oOoOo

Master Domick beckoned to Meeri after the meal; and she wondered if he had discovered what she had done.

"Sir?" she said.

"You wanted to talk to me?" he said.

She heaved a sigh, at least partly of relief!

"Only to ask you if you knew how people can bear to be shuttered in," she said, "for it would have me climbing the walls!"

He smiled grimly.

"Menolly feels the same" he said "Most people can't even stand the sight of Thread; remember, we had a long interval Thread free, and only a handful of people even knew it had happened before, let alone the minority who believed it would return. The Benden Weyrleader, and his sire, and his sire's sire and the Masterharper were among that minority. When it DID return it was such a shock that people were glad to scramble to the safety of stone and metal. That included many traders; those who were caught in the first Fall often lost so many they were reduced to a third of their previous numbers, their beasts horribly scored or killed. Whole families effectively destroyed. We heard so many stories" he shook his head sadly.

"My great grandfather Bavol always believed the Harpers" said Meeri. "Bavol made sure the family was in a cave when he first got word of Thread; he knew some of the drum messages you see. My mother was pregnant with me then; and we didn't lose anyone. It was before Uncle Poley and his family split away. I – do you think my father resented him being right to have trusted the Harpers? I – I mean, it sounds childish….."

Domick sighed.

"I'm afraid, young Meeri, only too many people ARE childish."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

The drumbeats next morning were everything Meeri could have hoped for. Heads rotated towards the drum hall as though pulled on strings attached to one puppet rig.

The drum journeyman was reputed to be furious, it later was whispered.

Domick's face too was fairly black when he summoned Meeri to his study.

"Your work?" he passed her a copy of the amended message.

There was no point lying.

"Yes, sir. It'll teach them to check before banging on blindly, won't it?" she said.

Domick spluttered.

"How DARE you make fun of dragonkind?" he roared.

Meeri blinked, confused.

"Who's making fun of dragons? It was only a laugh, sir, to see if the second-turners were awake. It was no insult to dragons – THEY'd not mind."

He sighed audibly.

"And I suppose if you've been used to hob-nobbing with them, you'd know that. But, you little idiot, it could be PERCEIVED as an insult to dragonkind!"

"Well it wasn't meant as one!" said Meeri, angrily "and I guess Solpeth or Renpeth or Frith would find it pretty funny. Dragons aren't humourless old porcines like a lot of humans are, you know and they know a joke from an insult because they have a few brains too."

"Did you just call me a brainless and humourless old porcine?" said Domick, dangerously.

She was shocked, and it showed.

"Oh not YOU, Master Domick! I was thinking of some of the overstuffed Holders that you were thinking about when you said some people might take it amiss, such that we've had to take work and shelter from, who take life so seriously that it passes them by without ever having lived! I'd never insult dragons, and I guess you know that deep down, and I'd never insult you either!"

He calmed down.

"It was thoughtless of you," he said, "not to recall that it's not so long since the Oldtimers were banished. Politics are fragile; you have- have-HAVE to be careful in what you say, or you'll never make a true Harper."

Meeri sighed.

"It's very hard when people are always so fardling touchy about little things," she sighed, "why can't people be sensible?"

"If people as a whole were sensible, the sun would explode in shock, for it's not human nature," growled Domick, "and a Harper must be SENSITIVE to human nature and not seek to provoke it!"

Meeri sighed again.

"That's much harder to learn than playing instruments" she said.

"Quite. That's why Master Robinton is Masterharper and I write tunes. HE can deal with people; I prefer not to" said Domick. "I have to punish you, of course."

"Oh yes, I expected that" said Meeri, smiling reassuringly at him. "I just couldn't resist."

"And they SHOULD have read it before beating it; and the journeyman teaching SHOULD have checked his own notation too" growled Domick "But whether he should have done or not, you have undermined his authority and that's what I'm punishing you for. You will be far too busy copying parts from the Spring Gather piece you're playing in to keep you from finding mischief for a while, and that with no embellishments or extras."

Meeri grinned ruefully.

It would be a tedious duty and her wrist would ache; but at least he trusted her to take her punishment honestly and perform the work with the greatest of care.

oOoOo

As well as copying the music, Meeri had, of course, already been practising with the other violinists; and now rehearsals with other musicians took place in earnest. She really did not have any time to get into mischief!

Some of those playing were less than happy to have a first turn apprentice playing with them; but Master Domick, conducting, blithely ignored the mutters.

After the first practice, one of the flautists said,

"Sir, one of the violins is sadly out."

"Yes, I know" said Domick. "Foley managed to cut his hand and he's a little clumsy. Silvina's been treating it though and he'll be all right on the day, won't you, Foley?"

The senior apprentice nodded.

"Yes, sir, I'm sorry."

"Be more patient with the chisels next time" chid Domick. "Your new violin won't grow any faster for trying to rush it; I'll lend you one of mine for the Gather."

"Sir, THANK you, sir!" said Foley.

The flautist, a Journeyman, still scowled.

"Wasn't the little kid out?" he said. "I see you've loaned HIM the best violin."

Domick turned and surveyed the flautist with annoyance.

"Meer plays the instrument inherited, like the child's talent, from an ancestor. Your remarks are out of line, Meer was spot on; which is more than I can say for your muffed entry into the second movement" he said coldly.

The flautist flushed.

"I'm sorry, sir."

"I suggest you apologise to Meer first for the nasty implications in what you said" said Domick quietly.

The Journeyman looked horrified.

"It's not necessary, sir" said Meeri, hastily.

"I think it is" said Domick. "There was a clear implication that you had borrowed your instrument without permission, as well as an imputation of your skill on it – purely on grounds of age" his eyes were narrowed.

"I – I apologise" muttered the flautist Journeyman.

"I accept happily" said Meeri, hoping it would not lead further to trouble! Fortunately he was not the Journeyman who taught her on flute.

The piece was practiced again with no further incident, Domick indicating to Foley to follow without playing this second time. It was beautiful music; and Meeri was able to get quite lost in it, focussing only on the sheets of music and Domick's capable direction with the economic movements of his long, able hands.

It was over all too soon!

"Same time tomorrow" said Domick "Klah's on the fire, in that kettle; but not for you, young Meer, you scoot off to bed, you've lessons first thing and bags under your eyes."

Meeri scooted happily enough! Shoris, who was singing in the final, choral, movement, grinned and winked at her.

He'd keep half an eye on the journeyman flautist, the look said, and Meeri grinned her gratitude as she left.

oOoOo

Meeri had never enjoyed anything as much as practising Master Domick's music with the other chosen musicians! She was quite transported by it, however often they played it, though some of the other musicians grumbled.

Meanwhile, Master Domick had extracted her and Laghen from Master Morshall's class with the intent that with those inventive spirits gone, the old master's classes should go easier. They joined Vaek – taken from his class of the Summer intake for the same reason – in pursuing more stretching exercises.

"All our rotten apples in one barrel" said Domick, cheerfully to the three.

They gave him injured looks as a matter of form.

He was right of course.

"We'd NEVER dare play old Domick up" said Laghen, later.

"And who'd want to?" said Vaek. "He's a brilliant teacher you know."

Meeri nodded.

They might get sick of crafting variations on 'Moreta's Ride' but they were also allowed to work on their own compositions and critique each other.

Meeri's own music met with mixed feelings from the other two.

"I can't ever see many people singing or playing it for their own entertainment" said Vaek. "It's clever, but it's too clever. Not like T'rin's that's clever and quite singable too, most of the time."

"It's a bit….solemn" said Laghen "Not all of it, but lots."

"The term for which you are searching is pomp and grandeur" said Domick, dryly. "Meer does joyous and rollicking ones too, and expressive tone poems….like the firestone bagging thing. By the by, was it you lot who led the rest in stamping, groaning and wheezing in unison to march over to breakfast?"

Meeri and Laghen grinned.

Domick sighed and cast his eyes up at them.

"It'll be posted tonight, so I warn you, that stamping and groaning in crocodile is hereby forbidden" he said.

"It served its purpose" said Meeri. She did NOT go on to say what the purpose was; to irritate a pompous Journeyman who could not, however, really take issue with apprentices going rather noisily to breakfast. He had moaned pointedly in the class he took, the reedless pipe or recorder as it was also called, that the first turners had been unable to keep time properly, and the self help group, furious that there had been only moans and no constructive aid over new fingering that some were slow to learn, had decided to shoe him how well they COULD keep time. And even Irtul had joined in THAT passive rebellion!

"Hmm, well, I dare say" said Domick, in reply to her cryptic comment. Meeri suspected he knew very well WHY they had stamped, groaned and wheezed and also had her strong suspicions that he had spoken sharply to the Journeyman involved.

In this she was quite correct.

Later, Domick came to listen to the class play, and see how far off time they were. As Laghen, Doorm and Meeri had rehearsed the rest thoroughly, helping with the new notes and finger changes, they were not far off timing at all.

Domick made no rebuke about unfounded complaints to the Journeyman in front of apprentices, but he raised a scathing eyebrow.

"So that's two windbags who hate me" said Meeri cheerfully to Laghen, telling him about the flautist.

He laughed.

"Nice description" he said.

As it happened, the recorder teaching Journeyman did not hate Meeri; not knowing that she had been one of the instigators of the marching incident. He was just relieved to have several boys, as he thought, in the persons of Meeri, Doorm, Laghen and Bargal who could pick up any pipe and play it with reasonable skill. For Meeri, recorder was like enough to the simple fipple whistle her people played as a traditional instrument with the bodhran, and she picked it up as quickly, preferring it to play for enjoyment over the more difficult, if richer, flute. The flute answered her composing needs better, however, having a greater range and versatility as well as a richer tone, so she persevered with it.

oOoOo

One of the other things the Unwholesome Trio – as Vaek, Laghen and Meeri had been dubbed by the teaching staff – enjoyed was being permitted to play together the instruments of their choice for half an hour daily, improvising around a theme provided by Master Domick. Some discords occurred from a lack of experience of working together, but on the whole it was a pleasant sound that arose from Meeri's violin, Laghen's flute and Vaek's multipipes. Sometimes Master Domick would even add a harp part himself; and his virtuosity on the instrument made Meeri determined to try that instrument as well!

oOoOo

The Gather drew closer, and some of the instrumentalists were starting to get nervous. Meeri could not understand it, and said so to Domick one evening.

"It's not as though we're not rehearsed until we could play it in our sleep," she said, "so what's to be nervous about? You've ironed out all our little wrinkles, we know our parts. I think it's exciting!"

"Ah, youth," said Domick, giving her a half-cynical, half-fond smile, "it's the thought of performing in front of all those people."

"Isn't that rather the point of performing?" said Meeri.

Domick laughed.

"Yes, but being in front of people DOES make a lot of people nervous. Me included!" he confessed. "I always hope they'll like my music and am afraid they won't."

"Well if they don't, they're tone deaf dimglows" scoffed Meeri.

He laughed.

"That's a boost to my ego, anyway! I lack the arrogance of a truly great composer, I'm afraid; though I believe some of my works HAVE been performed more often than Petiron's" he added dryly.

"Petiron? I don't think I've met him" said Meeri.

"You wouldn't; he's dead. I was his apprentice; when I had the arrogance of youth and dared to argue with my master" he looked at her pointedly and she flushed, but grinned. "I'm glad if you have no nerves," he added seriously, "and I hope you keep that insouciance as you grow past youth! The trouble is, if people are afraid of failing, it makes them nervous enough to make mistakes, which makes them more nervous…. You see how it happens."

"Oh, like when Master Morshall is barking in your face so you can't think straight?" said Meeri.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that criticism of a Master…. Yes, like that, he has much to put up with" he said.

She grinned.

"And I thought you'd relieved him of us!" she said.

"Minx!" he said.


	7. Chapter 7

_Thanks Jedi Knight 13! reviews are appreciated, nice to have thoughtful comments!  
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**Chapter 7**

The performance of Master Domick's work – entitled innocuously enough 'Craft, Hold and Weyr' – was not to be until the evening, so Meeri would be free to enjoy the Gather with her friends. She ran through the work mentally over breakfast as a final rehearsal. Each movement was a tone poem epitomising each of the three main ways of life, the final, choral, movement being a re-working of the Duty Song that used reprises of the themes of each of the previous three movements that ran between and formed harmonies on the traditional tune as a strict counterpoint, using three different species of the art for the three styles, syncopated for Craft, the same pace for Hold, and florid counterpart for the Weyr. Although each movement was tied to the Duty Song, Meeri was always amazed that none seemed in any way derivative of it when playing their themes alone!

Her fellows had not studied contrapuntal theory at all yet, but her eager questions about the work had led to Master Domick giving her an impromptu lesson on the subject, and she was mightily impressed that he was able to be so free with strict counterpoint when most composers favoured free counterpoint. She had been inspired to try a simple counterpoint using variation of the main theme as a fugue; and Domick had nodded and suggested that she stuck to simple rounds and catches for a while and worked up to more complex canons before moving on to fugal music because it almost worked. Then he patted her on the shoulder to take away the sting of damning it with faint praise.

He had been more impressed with her efforts than he had told her; but he did not want her to lose her spontaneity by forcing complexity before she was totally ready for it. He had no doubt that she would be writing perfectly adequate canons and fugues before the turn was out!

oOoOo

Meeri had crafted a couple of tambourines that Master Jerint had stamped for sale; she wanted the practice of bending wood, so that one day she might shape the body of a good second violin, and in the meantime she hoped to sell the tambourines to have some money to spend at the Gather and to put aside for buying wood for her violin too.

Domick stuck his head out of the window of his study and whistled melodiously to her, beckoning her up as she was about to leave with her fellows, and Jaynor groaned.

"Surely Master Slave-driver can't find you jobs on a Gather day?" he said.

"If he can, I'm glad to do them" retorted Meeri. "He's been good to me; you lot go on, I'll catch up" and she ran lightly up the stairs.

Domick regarded her thoughtfully.

"Meeri, did the Weyrfolk manage to remember to give you any spending money?" he asked.

Meeri shook her head.

"They gave me so much, though I was of their people such a short while – clothes, boots, instruments. I'd be dead greedy to want more, wouldn't I? I've a quarter mark set aside from what I hid from father when I played the fiddle for Thirtyseconds, he didn't get all of it, and I'm hoping to sell a couple of tambourines before the Gather's over" she said.

"HOW I do not like your father" said Domick, conversationally. "Here, take this, and if you tell anyone I gave it to you, I'll skin you and give your hide to Jerint for drums."

It was four quarter marks that he held out; a whole mark.

Her eyes widened.

"Sir, I – I can't…."

"Yes you can, you abominable brat!" he took her hand and firmly pressed the pieces of stamped wood into her palm, closing her fingers over them.

"WELL!" she said, "if you are going to be so kind and generous, I'm going to HAVE to be girlie!" and she kissed him on the cheek.

He laughed.

"Be off with you and buy something nice – don't spend it all on bubbly pies!" he laughed. "You'd be too full to play tonight!"

She grinned; and sped on her way.

oOoOo

"What did he want?" asked Laghen.

"Last minute instructions like not to eat too much bubbly pie in case I'm too full to play" laughed Meeri. It was not, after all, strictly a lie.

"Y'know what Dekello's done?" laughed Jaynor.

"I dread to ask" said Meeri, cheerfully.

"He's only gone and signed up for the catch the greased porcine competition" chuckled Jaynor.

"He's insane" said Meeri.

"That's what we said" opined Laghen, trying to stifle his laughter.

"For shell's sake, he'll be covered in grease and mud – how's he planning on explaining THAT to Silvina?" Meeri threw up her hands in horror.

""Aw, don't worry-wherry; it makes you sound like a girl" said Jaynor, offensively "And you're upsetting Snatch."

The little brown firelizard had been agitated by Meeri's worry over her friend's likely ticking off later, and she soothed him before remembering to give Jaynor a poke for impugning her 'manhood'. Whilst most boys would have been up in arms immediately over being likened to a girl, she could at least cover that slip by her concern for a firelizard!

"Oh well, I guess it's Dek's problem" she said. "Let's go watch how much of an idiot he makes of himself."

The slim Harper boy was getting a fair degree of good-natured abuse and teasing from the sturdy cotholders entering the competition, most of whom towered over him. Despite the chill in the air he had stripped down to his trews and taken his boots and socks off to preserve his clothes; as well he might, for Lord Groghe's beastmen were busy wetting and churning up the ground in the hogpen where the competition was to take place.

"You're a top flight nutter, Dek" said Meeri, cheerfully. He grinned, and tapped his nose conspiratorially.

"Remember – I was reared doing this sort of thing for a living" he said, quietly. "Reckon you'd not do badly putting some money on me."

"All right boys – what'll we do, mix in our hard won quarters and put a mark on him between us?" suggested Meeri. "Just to encourage him. And when – if – he loses, he has to buy us bubbly pies?"

That was voted a good plan, and they approached a betting marksman, Laghen, Jaynor and Vaek all putting in a quarter mark with Meeri.

"One mark on our friend, the Harper apprentice" said Laghen, solemnly, to the marksman.

The man laughed.

"Last of the big spenders, eh?"

"It is for us" said Laghen, with dignity. "What odds do you give?"

"Well, I'd normally give thirty-two to one, there being thirty three competitors" said the man "But as he's only a half-pint I'll give you sixty-four to one."

"Thank you sir, that'll be a lot of bubbly pies for us!" grinned Laghen.

oOoOo

The competition was quickly underway! Mud flew liberally, and Meeri ducked backward hurriedly as it flew past the pen rails too.

"You're fancy, laddie!" jeered one farmer.

"I'm playing for Lord Groghe this evening and I've only one good tunic. If you're so fardling rich as to change your tunic three times a day, what are you doing here to cheer on your brother over a mere porcine?" countered Meeri.

"Ar, no offence meant, lad. Great honour f'you to play for our lord – GO ON OUR SEWARD! Crackdust take the fool!" he added as the hapless Seward went face down in the mud. Meeri reflected that she would rather be face down in crackdust than what he was probably breathing in, making a mockery of the oath.

It was starting to smell quite pungent as well now; frightened hog, sweating men, and the occasional whiff of alcohol from those who had taken their courage from a barrel.

And then Dekello was astride the hog, hanging on for dear life, riding the poor creature round the pen, his hands locked to the ears, less greasy on the inside than the rest of the beast.

"I have the hog! I have the hog!" he cried delightedly "Make the count!"

The crowd started to roar out the count; the rules stated that anyone who could hold the porcine for a count of sixty was a winner.

oOoOo

"And what in blazes are you planning to do with the fardling thing now you've won it?" asked Meeri, scrupulously dividing out sixty-five marks between the five of them, arguing with some justification that Dekello was owed a fair share for using his skill to win for them. Thirteen whole marks each; more than she had ever seen before at any one time! And still the three quarters of a mark that Master Domick had given her! The marksman had not at first been happy to have to pay out so much, but he had seen the funny side. And by the time the competition was under way, the odds on Dekello had gone down considerably, with the man Seward as local favourite on evens. Marksmen rarely lost money when acting as bookies, and if the five apprentices thought that this was untold wealth, he had still cleared several times more than their haul from other side bets.

Dekello meanwhile regarded his large, pink prize critically, washed and free – mostly – of grease as it now was.

"Well, I can't breed it as it's a hog – gelded, you know" Dekello explained for the benefit of his less well-informed friends. "It's good to fatten for bacon. D'you think Silvina'd let me keep it in the courtyard?" he asked hopefully.

"In your dreams, I should think" said Meeri. "shut it, Vaek, you horror!" for Vaek was practically rolling on the ground with laughter at the thought of Silvina's face is Dekello even suggested it! "Hold on" said Meeri, whipping out her notebook to jot down the tune that had come into her head that she provisionally called 'the hog march'.

"Oh no, not tuning again!" groaned Jaynor "Seriously, Dek, what ARE you going to do?"

"Sell it, I guess" said Dekello. "I only did it for the prestige, you know."

"Give you two marks for it" said one of the losers, who was listening.

"He's a well-grown beast, plenty of flesh, worth three at least" said Dekello instantly.

"After you've rid him around? Two's my top offer" said the man.

Dekello thought.

"Done then" he said; and the deal was cemented.

"Only your trousers to sneak past Silvina" said Meeri cheerfully "No, Dek, don't split that, you took the risks and the hard work."

The others nodded as Dekello had tried to work out fifths of his two marks.

"Too right" said Vaek "Some insanity, huh?"

Dekello grinned.

"Yes, who's laughing now!" he said.

"Five rich apprentices" chuckled Laghen. "I vote we celebrate on bubbly pies and pressed redfruit juice!"

"Seconded!" said four other voices.

oOoOo

Meeri was even happier to find that her tambourines had been sold, and even with her tithing to the Harper Hall brought her four and a half marks between them. That made eighteen and a quarter marks in all! she thought happily, wealth beyond her wildest dreams!

"What are you going to buy, Meer?" asked Dekello.

"I don't need anything yet; but I'll want wood for a good violin and I expect I'll want Gather clothes when I grow out of these" she said. "I'll save most of it. Oh, one moment!" she had seen Master Domick and ran over to him, grinning broadly.

"You look like you've been having a good time, Meer" he said.

"Yes sir. And Sir, I invested a quarter mark to back Dekello in a competition; and he won and I'm rich now, 'cos my tambourines sold too, so I've eighteen and a quarter marks and please can I give you back the mark and match it too for another less well off apprentice? I – I want to put much of the other by for materials for instrument crafting, I hope you don't think that's greedy, and tithe a couple of marks to the Harperweyr orphan fund."

"Greedy?" his eyes softened. "My dear child, I think you have a generous heart and nature. If you are determined to tithe twice to the needy, I'll put the marks you offer aside for another; but if you are ever in need yourself, don't hesitate to ask me. And don't forget," he lowered his voice and made a rapid glance to see no-one was listening, "you may want a dowry too – unless you plan to go back to the Harperweyr to try for Impression."

"I plan to make my way with music" she tossed her curls. "If there's a man for me one day who won't take my talent as a dowry he won't be worth loving."

Domick smiled.

"Quite true" he said. "Now, run along, or your friends will think I've found you more errands to run!"

She grinned, slipping two mark pieces into his hand with the skilled legerdemain of a trained pickpocket; a skill she had been fully trained in by her father.

Domick noted it as a possible skill to use in the field, so to speak, if an observant lad – lass – were needed to drop notes unobtrusively into the pouches of others; or retrieve messages from potential troublemakers without them being aware of it.

oOoOo

Bubbly pies and a good bit of haggling over a carved jade paperweight from Lemos carved as a green dragon – a gift for T'arla – reduced her funds to fourteen marks, two marks being deducted for the Harperweyr fund and set aside. And she was still rich! Meeri knew all the tricks, and tied the majority of hier marks into a handkerchief inside her tunic and advised her friends to do the same.

She had to explain why, and demonstrated how easily she could pick their pouches.

"Useful thing to know" said Vaek, thinking of its uses to a Harper.

"Yes, especially when a man's pouch is what stands between you and a meal for the day" said Meeri, defiantly.

They were shocked to think of her doing this for real, not merely as an abstract skill; but they were also her friends.

"Your folks get mine a bad name, you know" said Laghen; but there was no deep resentment in his tone.

Meeri shrugged.

"I know. I've been taught that it's wrong. But I never knew that when I was growing up. It's one of the things we're Harpers for – to teach everyone right from wrong. I got beaten if I didn't steal enough, and there's plenty kids in the same boat. Up to us to help stop that."

"Yeah, guess so" said Laghen, serious suddenly for once in his life, never having stopped to consider that some kids might get beaten for NOT stealing.

"Too right" said Vaek, and Dekello nodded his agreement too. Jaynor said,

"And that's why High Reaches helps orphans so they don't get took up by thieves and renegades to steal for 'em."

"And worse" said Meeri, grimly. "Oh, didn't you boys know that there are men warped and evil enough to want sex with children? Boys or girls? Pretty boy like Vaek would take thirty or forty marks for his virginity and fifteen or so each time after."

The boys paled.

"I'm tithing to the High Reaches orphan fund" said Meeri casually.

"Yeah. Reckon we will too" said Laghen. "Right, chaps?"

"Oh yes!" said Vaek, fervently, putting his backside firmly against a table.

"Every time" said Jaynor.

"Indeed!" agreed Dekello.

Two marks became ten, and that was almost enough to feed a child for a month.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Meeri found that she had some nerves when the company of Harpers assembled on the dais provided for them in front of Lord Groghe and all the important people from Fort Hold, as well as all the senior Masters and a good smattering of dragonmen from Fort Weyr. However, she pushed her nerves back; she was well rehearsed, was she not? The music flowed in her very blood when she played it, making a mistake was highly unlikely.

She smiled brightly at Domick as he raised his baton, to reassure him; and the corner of his mouth twitched at the idea of one of his youngest performers reassuring him instead of it being the other way round!

It went perfectly.

As always, once she started to play, Meeri was completely transported, being a woodcrafter sawing, a holder dancing, a dragon flying, each in turn. Then she was in the chorus, one of the 'boy' sopranos, soaring above the main theme of the Duty Song as part of the expression of the duty to the Weyr and to one's own part in life.

When the final note had ended, the audience applauded thunderously.

Less than half of them fully appreciated as much as half of the music, of course; but the theme was well received, though Lord Groghe was heard to grunt in some dissatisfaction,

"With that fancy singing at the end, you couldn't hear the words of the Duty Song properly."

"You're supposed to know it so well that you don't HAVE to hear it, only realise that it's there" said his wife, Benoria, with what Meeri thought was commendable insight for a non Harper. "You do know it that well, my dear. So you can concentrate on the, er, embellishments."

"I like it better without embellishments" grumbled Groghe. "Oh, it's pretty sounding music, my dear, and very clever I'm sure, but I hope they aren't planning on making us sing the Duty Song like that. Besides, I couldn't, even if I wore my trews too tight."

Meeri drifted over and bowed respectfully.

"Excuse me, Lord Groghe, I hope you don't mind if I venture an explanation" she said. "It's no change to the Duty Song. Just using it as a framework to hang the themes of our society on as portrayed by Master Domick's wonderful music. As you hang tapestries on a wall. The wall, solid stone, is the basis of society, solid, unyielding, protective – like the Duty Song. But if you hang three tapestries showing life in Hold, Craft and Weyr it would still be on that solid basis, but showing a more colourful interpretation of our society."

"HRMPH! Well that explains it very well" said the irascible Lord Holder. "Very well indeed. Don't you have a dragonriding relative somewhere, boy? Seen a face like yours before."

"Sir, yes, sir. T'arla at High Reaches Harperweyr. Though I've another cousin there too now, Bronze Rider Ch'vul. I – I think T'arla is friendly with Kitiara who's now a candidate – didn't I hear that she's a relative of yours?"

Groghe beamed.

"M'granddaughter" he said proudly. "Hatching in a few days; I'll be going. Are you?"

Meeri laughed.

"Oh, Master Domick's far too much a slavedriver to let me have a holiday for hatching when I've no relatives standing for this one" she said cheerily.

She would have liked to have had the chance to have supported Ch'vul; but her father had refused to let her go when L'gal came to collect relatives. She had been lucky that he could not really refuse to let her be taken on Search, even if he had muttered about too many proddy Queens and dragonmen!

"Ah well! Got to keep you boys' noses to the grindstone, I suppose, what? I'll remember you to your cousins, lad. What's the name?"

She hesitated.

"Meeri, sir. They call me Meer, here."

He peered closer. "Are you a girl?" he asked, bluntly.

"Yes, sir, but I'm not advertising it" she said "Nor did T'arla until she'd actually Impressed."

Groghe chuckled.

"Can see why she's a friend of my granddaughter then" he said, good naturedly. "Well, well, your secret is safe with me – boy!" and he went off, still chuckling.

"Brash brat to accost the Lord Holder" said Domick from behind Meeri.

"Sir, I didn't accost him! I just explained your music in terms I thought he'd understand!" said Meeri, earnestly, turning to him.

Domick shook his head, grinning.

"Brasher brat! And presumptuous too!" he said.

Meeri grinned back, unrepentantly.

"Well I understand it better than laymen do anyway" she said "And I know that Lord Groghe is nice because all the Weyr says so. I think he's a perfect sweetie too."

Domick laughed.

"What's to be done about you?" he said. "You don't conform to any mould or rule!"

"So I should hope, sir" retorted Meeri. "I don't want to be boring!"

oOoOo

A few days later, L'gal turned up with the news that K'iara had Impressed Idrith and the further news that Varalie, who had left the Harper Hall before Meeri had had much chance to do more than exchange greetings and decide that she liked her, was currently fostering in Nabol but would come to the Weyr for the next hatching. Meeri gave him the paperweight for T'arla; and she and her friends solemnly turned over their marks for the orphan fund.

L'gal was touched, and said so.

"Oh it was all because of Dek and his hog" said Meeri; and L'gal had to be told the tale with, as Laghen said, suitable Harper embellishments.

"And Meer wrote music about it" said Vaek.

"And worked on it?" asked L'gal.

"Haven't had time yet" said Meeri. "Too much work and catching up on earlier things. You know!"

He nodded.

"So long as you make sure that you do work on it" he said, and smiled at her when she nodded firmly.

"Of course we named the hog before Dek sold it" said Laghen, greatly daring. "We hope it makes that cotholder a tasty Morshall."

L'gal cuffed him for the horrible pun and the impudence; then cuffed the rest on general principles.

"That's for making fun of your masters and mentioning it to a Journeyman" he said.

They grinned.

His cuffs were not very hard.

oOoOo

The next momentous event was at High Reaches Weyr; the Masters had been invited by T'rin to a performance that could only take place in a Weyr, and Tamalenth was egg-heavy and it must take place before she needed the Hatching cavern. Meeri begged Domick to take her as his gopher; and he agreed.

The acoustics of the hatching cavern were perfect; and the performance exquisite. Meeri was not the only one to be reduced to tears. The blending of dragon, human and firelizard voices win the cantata 'Flying' was like nothing she had ever heard.

"Bravo!" cried Domick.

The Master Harper rose.

"I think we can all say that none of us have ever experienced anything like this" he said. "T'rin's music improves all the time. Though there are still minor flaws in his writing – of which I am certain he is aware – few will encounter a more magnificent piece save perhaps from the pen of Domick."

"I didn't notice any mistakes" whispered Meeri.

"Flaws, not mistakes – a hurried segue, a – not clumsy, but not smooth – change of pace, you can find them later" whispered back Domick.

The Masterharper was continuing,

"The Firelizards and dragons enhance the excellence of the piece, not mask any flaws, and I freely admit I was wrong to fear that such might turn out to be the case; T'rin, I apologise! These magnificent voices only go to make this finely crafted piece more memorable. And no offence to K'bit either; his voice is equal to singing with dragons as few ever are. And L'gal has risen to the occasion to surpass himself. Such a piece justifies, if any ever thought it required justifying, the Harperweyr."

The Masterharper was applauded by the whole Weyr!

"K'bit, I regret in some ways your Impression" said Shonagar "Though I am sure you do not for my regret is selfish in that I shall not have you as a pupil in the Harper Hall, and nor am I likely to before your voice breaks. L'gal is privileged to have the chance to train you; and if he makes a mess of it, Bronze Rider or no, I'll be after him with Master Olodkey's drumsticks!" he shook a joking finger at L'gal and there was general laughter.

"I will do my best" said L'gal "And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for abandoning your other pupils for a sevenday or two to give K'bit the more advanced exercises that he needs; and I thank Master Robinton for letting you come too."

"I'd have and a task stopping him now he's heard the boy sing" said Robinton. "Nothing short of shackles would have held him back! And now, I believe, the Weyr has provided a feast for this occasion and will not, I hope, stint on the Benden Red!"

There was general merriment for the Masterharper's weakness for red Benden wine was well know; and K'bit looked like he had just Impressed all over again!

After so much emotion, Meeri was glad to be having a feast; excitement always made her hungry.

It would be odd not to have Master Shonagar in the Harper Hall; but he had some very adequate journeymen who could keep the Voicemaster's special pupils like Vaek hard at work on their voice exercises.

oOoOo

Back in the Harper Hall Master Domick ran through T'rin's score with Meeri to point out those places where it might have been improved, the flaws he had mentioned and a contrapuntal passage that could have been cleaner; though nobody could have called it messy.

"I'd love to write something that good – for most of us, T'rin's flawed passages are beyond what we could aspire to!" said Meeri, enviously.

Domick ruffled her curls.

"Oh, you'll come to write as well at least, my dear" he said. "Just work on your theory and on getting the simple work right. Like the idea of hanging the themes of 'Hold, Craft and Weyr' in the basis of the good solid Duty Song, you can only excel when you have the framework of good solid theory. You have the talent; now you're acquiring the tools. You WILL get there."

Meeri smiled at him.

He could make her believe it!

She applied herself firmly to her work.

oOoOo

Meeri was actually at the drumheights when the message came in for the Masterharper to come immediately to Benden Weyr as the Queen egg had been stolen.

She went white.

"SHARDS!" she said.

Olodkey gave her a sharp look; the message had been encoded in the 'Harper ears only' code.

"Did you understand that, boy?" he asked.

"Yessir" said Meeri, shocked. "First egg, who'd have the gall to steal a Queen egg? Shall I run the message to the Masterharper?"

"Hah! You might as well, though I dare say he heard as well as any" said Olokkey. "We'll discuss your knowledge later."

Meeri grinned.

"High Reaches Weyr, sir!" she called by way of explanation as she took the stairs on one heel, the way the seabred at High Reaches had taught her to, to gallop across the courtyard.

She met the Masterharper as he was coming out, shrugging into flying gear as he went.

"Yes, I heard," he said in his beautiful voice, "but I thank you for your haste; the wind isn't always in the correct quarter to carry the sound down so clearly."

He nodded to her as he made for the Harper Hall duty dragon on his long legs.

Meeri paused to catch her breath before starting the long climb back; and was therefore able to see the white dragon emerge from _Between_, and Menolly dashing out to fling herself onto Ruth's back. Meeri raised an eyebrow and returned to the drumheights .

"He heard, sir" she said to the Drum Master.

Olodkey grunted.

"So you're a part of this group that works out drum measures by logic" he said.

"Yes, sir" said Meeri.

"Pity you put too many flourishes in when you beat or I might be suggesting you should be a drum apprentice" he said.

"I'm sorry about the flourishes, sir. I – I kind of get caught up with the tunes in my head. I do TRY not to let them out into the sticks" apologised Meeri.

"Huh. Well if you tune, someone's going to find some use for it" said Olodkey, dourly, in the tone of voice that suggested that tuning was but a frivolous second best to drumming!

Snatch was showing some agitation on Meeri's shoulder, but she could not concentrate on him as a drum message was coming in to the effect that the stolen egg had been returned!

"Rum" murmured Meeri to herself.

"You are not here to speculate on messages, only to take them, pass them on as needed, and repeat to the next station where necessary" Master Olodkey chided.

Meeri waited until his back was turned and stuck her tongue out at him before turning to Snatch whose agitation was now quite marked, portraying images of dragons flaming firelizards!

Olodkey did not approve of firelizards at the best of times; drums were the best means of communications in his opinion, and his irritation at Snatch's distress was considerable. More concerned with soothing her pet, Meeri caught the scowl he gave her and merely said,

"I'm sorry sir, he's upset and scared."

"Keep that creature under control and quiet, or give you both something to be scared about!" snapped the Drum Master, whacking Meeri across the knuckles with a drum stick. Snatch flew up, squawking.

"Don't scare him more!" cried Meeri.

The drumstick caught her hard, this time across the face.

"OUT!" screamed Olodkey "You and your stupid pet, out! I don't want to see you again!" he roared, as Snatch flew at him, protective of Meeri, dodging neatly _Between_ to avoid a flailing stick.

Meeri retreated hurriedly, Snatch reappearing at her shoulder as she descended . Almost sobbing with pain in her throbbing and burning face and hand, she settled him as best she might, and ran for her haven, Master Domick's room.

The Tunecraftmaster was soothing his own bronze firelizard. Fugue, while issuing instructions to a journeyman who was with him; he waved Meeri to stand and wait as though he had summoned her for some assignment.

oOo

"Well? What is it?" Domick asked when the journeyman had gone.

"Right after the egg was back, Snatch started going into a frenzy, panicking that dragons were flaming firelizards; I couldn't calm him down. Master Olodkey wasn't happy. He told us to get out."

Domick glowered at her face and left hand.

"So I see" he said dryly. "Go and soak your hand in cold water and I'll draw some hot off the fire. It'll be klah flavoured but that won't hurt. We need to get that swelling down and see if my violinist's hand has been broken at all."

He made no accusation nor spoke vituperation; but the steel in his voice suggested that he was quite likely going to be having words with Olodkey.

'Common humanity' were not words in the Drum Master's vocabulary; but preventing apprentices performing adequately for other masters was a viable plaint. Meanwhile Domick had a hot and a cold pad alternately to the girl's cheek while she obediently, and painfully, soaked her hand in alternately hot and cold water in bowls; and when he felt that he had taken the swelling down as far as possible he fetched a jar of numbweed to slather on her.

"It – it's not low enough down to interfere with tucking the fiddle under my chin" Meeri ventured.

"And it DID miss your eye – just" said Domick grimly. "You'll have a lovely shiner there, my dear. Are you all right?"

Meeri nodded.

"It was Snatch I was worried about – see, he's still scared!" she said.

"Poor little fellow!" crooned Domick. "My little Fugue is just as upset; as you saw when you came in. He seems to have hidden himself under the bed now!"

Fugue crept out and flew over to Snatch, and the two exchanged unhappy pleasantries as Domick and Meeri each petted their own firelizard.

"Meeri, did you see images of a small black dragon around the time the dragons flame lizards, busy picking up the egg?" asked Domick as he scratched Fugue's poll.

Meeri nodded.

"Oh! Can it be T'mon's Denth rescuing it because an undersized dragon can go anywhere more easily?" she asked "Because he's a logicator and worked out where it was being hidden?"

Domick said,

"I was wondering if a white hide had been darkened."

Meeri stared.

"Ruth? Well the firelizards like him. And I DID see him pick up Menolly right after the egg was stolen!"

"And Ruth would have a better chance of finding out where – or when – the egg was taken, by asking firelizards" said Domick. "I get some very odd images from Fugue at times, usually in response to the music I play…. Well, it's been returned, and that's an end to it."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

It was not an end to it.

Masterharper Robinton returned from the Weyr looking old and ill; and the whisper went round that Lessa of Benden was so angry that she had banished him from Benden for advocating caution.

It was a very tense time.

The Masterharper went to the hatching of the Queen egg, hardened more than a sevenday more than its clutchmates, and looked a lot brighter and had more of a spring to his step when he returned. He ruffled Meeri's hair as he passed her.

"Ah, next time you write to your cousin, ask them to thank that little red-haired Weyrwoman for me" he said.

He refused to be drawn any further however.

Consumed by curiosity, Meeri sent Snatch with a message to T'arla.

Snatch arrived back without a reply and chirping apologetically; but Frith landed on the dancing square barely a quarter hour later.

T'arla thumped Meeri on the shoulder, ruffled her hair roughly and was about to give her a loving clout about the back of the head when she saw the bruises, still multicoloured.

"What's this?" she asked sharply. T'arla knew the difference between the marks of ordinary fighting and something that went beyond that.

Meeri shrugged.

"Master Olodkey doesn't like the disruption of frightened firelizards," she said with studied neutrality, "so I'm relieved of duty on the drum heights as he never wants to see me again. I think Master Domick saw HIM though" she chuckled a little maliciously, displaying her hand. It had actually required bandaging by Silvina, for Domick had insisted, seeing her awkwardness still the day after. Silvina had determined that there was a bone broken and set it in a healing plaster. "He doesn't like his apprentices being damaged" she added.

"Nasty old fart" sympathised T'arla. "Still, you've had worse and survived" she added.

Meeri nodded.

"It's galling not being able to fiddle though" she said "At least he waited to break my hand until AFTER I'd played at the Spring Gather."

"Fill his drums with shorn wool or cotton from Southern Boll so they muffle" suggested T'arla.

Meeri brightened.

"Just the thing!" she said happily

"I never suggested it" grinned T'arla.

"Suggested what?" said Meeri, innocently. "Say, are you going to tell me what happened over Lessa and the egg?"

T'arla grinned.

"T'lana was furious when she got word from T'bor that Lessa was thinking of pitting dragons against dragons – yes, unthinkable isn't it?" she said as Meeri gasped. "But even though the egg was returned Lessa wanted vengeance on the Oldtimers for their insult, of all the melodramatically primitive things! By the way, we think Jaxom and Ruth rescued the egg, what do you think?"

"I only discussed it with Master Domick, but he thinks so too" said Meeri.

"He'd be a fine logicator if we could only steal him for the Weyr" said T'arla.

"You leave him be, he's ours!" said Meeri hotly.

T'arla raised an eyebrow.

"Sits the wind in that quarter? Well you're around 15 turns now, quite old to be unwed as tinker girls go. And I'd not mind betting still a virgin."

Meeri flushed.

"Yes I am. What of it?"

"Oh he'll like it. Deep down, anyway. He'll be nervous of your virginity of course, nice Holderfolk and Crafterfolk always are."

"DO you mind?" said Meeri tartly.

"Not at all" said T'arla cheerfully. "Anyway, I was telling you; T'lana hared off to Benden and I did some really careful eavesdropping when she got back. Apparently she told Lessa that she was acting like a spoilt, childish holderbrat who should be ashamed of herself as all her Ruathan ancestors would be; and when Lessa struck her, our T'lana took off her belt and passed it over, suggesting that if Lessa had taken leave of her senses enough to fight other dragonriders she might as well do a job of it. Lessa screeched at her, and T'lana asked if making like a Tillek fishwife made her feel any better. Then Lessa burst into tears and T'lana cuddled her. End of."

Meeri whistled.

"That could have gone badly!" she commented. T'arla nodded, and continued,

"High Reaches would NOT have responded to a call to fight the Oldtimers; and I don't think F'lar would have let her. Though it might have had repercussions of splitting them, so cheers to T'lana" she added thoughtfully; and Meeri winced to think of Ramoth being flown by anyone but Mnementh, replacing the best Weyrleader on Pern. T'arla went on, "Lessa really hates firelizards right now and so does Ramoth, but with Merry sitting on Mirrith's head defying the big Gold – she's very brave in Mirrith's company – she might come round. T'lana told Lessa that hating firelizards for some being used by those they Impressed to – reminding her they can be Impressed after all – was like blaming traders for those thieves among the Holdless or for blaming Benden for those Oldtimers who flamed and chased Holderfolk in the High Reaches. That got her!" grinned T'arla. "Nothing like bringing it close to home!"

Meeri shuddered.

"It all sounds horrible" she said.

"Yes it was. But hopefully it's all over and we can go back to normal" said T'arla. "You can tell your Master Domick but I'd rather you kept it to yourself otherwise."

"He's not 'my' anything" protested Meeri.

T'arla laughed.

"Sure, kid" she said. "Oh, thanks most awfully for the carved dragon! I was too busy to say at the Cantata, but I love her!"

Meeri grinned.

"I hoped you would" she said. "I thought she looked a bit like Frith."

T'arla ruffled her hair again and with a nod was off.

oOoOo

Meeri went to report the conversation to Master Domick. Most of it anyway. Comments concerning him she edited firmly out.

He nodded.

"'Blunt' was a word that came to mind concerning T'lana" he said. "Everyone steps carefully around Lessa because of her furious temper; being told like it is might even be good for her. And one person she'd not actually want to hurt is the Rider of a fertile Queen. THAT's inside Ramoth's head somewhere, except during mating of course."

Meeri nodded.

"Queenriders don't fight" she said, quoting unknowingly the adage firmly implanted by T'lana after L'rilly had nearly caused her death. Meeri had no knowledge of this incident of course; only of the saying that had grown out of it!

oOoOo

The Masterharper returned from the actual hatching looking saddened; but not as crushed as he had done from Lessa's wrath.

The news filtered down that Fanna, the Weyrwoman of Ista Weyr, was dying; and that D'ram had stepped down as Weyrleader. He had invoked a Oldtimer custom of an open flight when the next senior Queen, Caylith, rose.

"Huh," said Sebendon, a lad from a minor hold in Nerat, beholden to Ista Weyr, "Barnath will fly Caylith, open flight or no, he has done before and that makes a difference. G'dened is D'ram's son too, so that'll be good. Cosira's said to be a good Weyrwoman."

Sebendon was given to making rather didactic statements but over this one Meeri nodded.

Everyone knew that if a Queen had been flown by a particular Bronze she often retained a preference for that Bronze. That G'dened was D'ram's son also augured well; T'bor had said that D'ram was the best of the three Oldtimer Weyrleaders. As T'bor loathed R'mart that was not perhaps glowing praise; but Meeri had heard nothing but expressions of sympathy for D'ram over Fanna's illness from the High Reaches people which perhaps said more!

oOoOo

Meeri put to her friends the idea of sabotaging Master Oldokey's teaching drum.

"Not the message drum of course, that would be unforgivable" she said hastily "But his teaching drum and any of his own we can open without damaging would be just fine!"

There were chuckles and cries of agreement; Meeri's friends had been outraged over her bruises and broken hand, especially Jaynor, who had needed to soothe Clayboy and knew how agitated the firelizards had been over the egg incident.

"Vicious he is" opined Vaek, who had had his own share of knocks from the Masterdrummer's quick drum sticks. "It'll serve him right."

"He'll beat us good and proper if he catches us or finds out" warned Meeri. "I'm used to beatings but if anyone wants to back out, I'll not think any the less of him you know."

"The more of us we have the quicker we can be" said Jaynor. "I'm certainly in – trying to whack you Snatch indeed!"

"Me too!" declared Vaek "I owe him a few grudges."

"And I'm always game to make a nasty old man look stupid" said Laghen.

"And I for a friend, like Laghen, even if he never has hit me" said Dekello. "I've heard enough stories from other people too."

They raided the rag bins in the end; Silvina cut up such clothing as was too bad to be worn being past mending; she took out the best pieces to patch with, the next best for cleaning cloths, strips to weave into rugs and so on, and the rest were ravelled for inclusion in felt or as wadding for cushions. The apprentices found a big bag of wherry down too, for stuffing quilts and pillows and happily purloined it.

"Silvina will have it back when he has to unstuff his drums" said Meeri, to ease her conscience. It was not really stealing after all; only borrowing to put somewhere else in the Harper Hall! Which piece of casuistry satisfied them all.

Getting the Masterdrummer out of his quarters was a harder task; the miscreants decided to miss a meal to do the deed and hope their companions would cover for them!

"Which is risky" said Laghen "But they're not a bad bunch. Sebendon's opinionated, Keilem's bossy and has no sense of humour, Kimmet's lazy and Irtul is an idiot, but really that's as bad as they get. And EVERYONE resents your shiner, Meer, on behalf of all apprentices, so reckon they'll cover, and maybe even save some food for us too!"

Meeri had personal doubts about Corbret who was so dutiful that he had had the soubriquet 'sneak' hissed at him once or twice for naming Laghen as troublesome before that imaginative wight had been given more work by Master Domick; but even Corbret nodded agreement to the plan when it was mooted.

"It's not right what he does" he said "It's against his duty. I'll happily stand by my fellows in this rebuke."

Meeri grinned at him in relief.

It was an overdeveloped sense of duty that would make Corbret pompous by the time he Turned twenty, not a desire for approval from authority. THAT could be worked on another time!

oOoOo

Working quickly over supper, passing the bags of stuffing – surprisingly heavy – in a chain gang up the stairs, Jaynor was left at the bottom for having a fire lizard to send with a warning; for as Meeri said, the offence was to herself and who better to be in at the top?

Jaynor conceded this.

Vaek, claiming half a turn's more experience in pranks than the others, nobly agreed to be second watchman outside Master Olodkey's room; and the other four worked quickly with the tools they had purloined for the purpose from Master Jerint's workshop to undo the teaching drum head and stuff it.

"If we've no time for others, so be it, let's do at least one well rather than skimping with others" said Meeri.

It was tempting to try it for sound; but they managed to resist the temptation! If the thud of the drum were insufficiently muffled, it would bring the Drummaster roaring up with vengeance in his heart!

"And I'm not surprised Menolly never offered HIM a firelizard" said Meer, folding up an empty bag and retying a half full one. "Let's not risk it for kicks and giggles, one is enough. They'll be on their sweet by now."

Laghen nodded; and they withdrew quietly and quickly, hiding the sacks in a teaching room to sneak back to the basement after dark.

The other apprentices has done their jobs well, asking some of the older apprentices to join them and tell stories of the famous exploits of a second-turn boy known for his wild first turn. At Vaek's request, his older friends also mixed in and took some younger boys to sit with them, so the arrangement of the tables was completely out of its usual pattern, meaning that it would be harder for anyone to see if five apprentices were there or not. Braid, Gavel, Gwetul and Timmis had all suffered from Master Olodkey, especially Gavel. Braid had also every intention of looking out for the Holdless Meeri anyway; save that she seemed to have adjusted far better than he did, and needed no intervention!

oOoOo

The proof would be on the morrow when Olodkey would be training his own special pupils.

There was no sound of the practice drum.

Master Olodkey's voice WAS however audible from the drumheights.

Presently it rained rags and wherry down.

"Shells, how WASTEFUL!" said Meeri, craning dangerously out of Master Domick's window to watch the strange rain.

"You boys cut downstairs and collect up everything that falls" said Domick "And take it to Silvina. Don't miss a feather. You can complete your lessons in your leisure time."

"Y'think he knows?" asked Laghen as they ran down to comply.

Vaek snorted.

"Of COURSE he knows! Master Domick knows everything! It's his way of setting punishment for baiting a Master but not making it too bad to show he didn't really disapprove."

"We'd be honour bound to clear it up anyway" said Meer "For it's not Silvina's fault the nasty creature had a temper tantrum over her cushion stuffing."

Silvina was embarrassingly grateful they the three had collected all her scattered stuffing, and rewarded them with bubbly pies!

They murmured a rather shifty thanks and took themselves and their bounty off before she changed her mind!

"And WHY," said Silvina, angrily, to Menolly, when the Journeyman came to see what was afoot, "the old fool couldn't empty my down into a bag, not throw them out of the window, I do not know!"

"Artistic temperament?" asked Menolly, tongue in cheek.

"I'll give him artistic temperament when I see him next!" threatened Silvina.

It was NOT Olodkey's day!

The unwholesome trio, listening on the stairs fairly hugged themselves and grinned!


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

There were no repercussions from Master Olodkey's feathered drum, or even any 'reaped percussions' as Laghen punned outrageously.

The culprits were a mystery to the outraged master, though the grapevine told of Olodkey raging at the Masterharper and demanding that all the boys be put on water rations until those involved confessed!

"But the Masterharper don't do collective punishments" grinned Ferry, who was passing on this titbit of news to his friends in the dormitory; and Meeri sat still and quiet behind the screens with Dorasha, listening for all she was worth. Ferry went on, "he says it's against the Charter, and we all know how keen is Master Robinton about the Charter!"

There were murmurs of agreement, grammatical mangling of the statement notwithstanding.

"Any idea who did it?" asked Kerill "I mean, it'd be our style if he'd hurt one of our own, and I must say I was tempted to break out and do something seeing as he'd broken Meeri's hand, let along given her such a shiner; but I didn't think of stuffing his favourite thing with feathers."

Ferry chuckled.

"I'd lay odds on Vaek to be involved," he said, "but I'm not going to make any wild guesses! They might get back if Lisend got bullied enough" he nodded to the boy who specialised in drum.

"Ferry! I do NOT squeal!" said Lisend, indignantly. "He did ask me and all the others if we had done it or knew who did. He was in a fearful bate" – there were sounds of whoops of laughter muffled by a well bitten pillow as he recalled the scene – "there we were, expecting to go BOOM! And all it would say was phut!" he rolled around laughing again.

"Nice sort of Master that can make his top apprentices happy to laugh at him" murmured Stev.

"Lisend's good enough at drumming and quiet enough to keep out of trouble; but most of them at the drum heights are bullies" said Ferry, quietly. "Attitudes come from the top, you know. One or two rotten apples happen in any place, but when all but one of the drum Journeymen and most of the senior apprentices are ready to do others down, there's something wrong. Hearty types for the most part who can't tell when ragging ends and bullying begins; but it should be stepped on quickly and quietly. The sooner he retires or drops dead and Rokayas takes over the better. Rokayas is strict but he's fair enough."

There were murmurs of assent over that. Rokayas was not popular but he was well respected.

"I wish I'd seen it" said Anslas. "no BOOM! Just a phut… love it!"

So did Meeri.

She repeated the conversation to her co-conspirators on the morrow, and they rolled about laughing.

The mirth was interrupted as Meeri was struck suddenly by the feeling of impending sadness emanating from Snatch; he and Clayboy had stiffened, as though listening for something beyond the hearing of human ears.

Then it started and the little firelizards joined in, keening in their treble voices alongside the dragons. The duty dragon let out a high, sad ululation and the voices of every firelizard in the Harper Hall added their descants. Echoing across the volcanic rim of the Weyr came the distant and eerie sound of dragons mourning.

"Fanna dies" said Meeri, softly.

The tune had to be written down; even though it made her cry to write it.

oOoOo

It was several days later that F'lar and Mnementh arrived, the Weyrleader looking personally for the Masterharper, and Vaek managed to overhear some of the conversation.

"D'ram's disappeared" he told the others "F'lar is afraid he's gone enough back in time to suicide so it won't upset the dragons. Do dragons keen for ALL dragons, Meer?" he asked.

"As I understand it, clutchmates always keen one another; Weyrs tend to grieve one of their own whatever. But only senior Bronzes and any Queen get the attention of all the Weyrs, 'cos with old age and Thread accidents they'd keen at least once a month else" said Meeri. "But he IS a senior Bronze and however far back he went, Benden was always there and he'd know that. I don't think he's suicided. Besides, who'd deliberately make his dragon die? I couldn't do anything to hurt Snatch, and it's less strong, I'm told than DRAGON Impression."

"So they're going to look for him?" asked Dekello. "Wouldn't it be more sensible to turn out the Weyrs to overfly everywhere?"

Meeri snorted.

"F'lar wants Master Robinton's brains to work out where and when D'ram's gone, if he can" she said "They can't overfly every time from now back to the last Pass! He'd probably ask T'lana rather than the Masterharper but I – but I heard that she'd had a slight disagreement with Lessa, and F'lar's not tactless enough to worry his Weyrwoman until they've made up."

"There's more to that than you're saying" said Vaek. "C'mon, Meer, give it up!"

"Shan't either" said Meeri "'Cos I promised my cousin to keep it to myself, it being Weyr business."

"Shells, an honour matter! We can't rag him then!" said Laghen in disgust.

Laghen's honour was at least as strong as the stuffy Cobret's in his own way; and Meeri was glad that he'd be immovable on that and would stand by her however much her more volatile friends cajoled!

oOoOo

The drums told of D'ram's safe return within days; and Meeri was glad. Far more momentous to some of her friends, however, were the postings; particularly for those who had been there a whole turn already. The postings told who was to be confirmed as an apprentice, who might be likely to be asked to leave as insufficiently talented – or hard working – in any Harper skill; also those who – rarely – might be given an extension on the usual turn permitted to confirm.

"The Harper Hall tries to find talent of some kind in everyone," Vaek explained, "but so many people come just because they think it's a soft option and they like music and they just don't make the grade in anything."

"cough Irtul cough" coughed Laghen.

"Well yes" said Vaek. "Though the reason there are extensions is for when the Masters think someone might pull up their game with a second chance. And maybe he will."

"Poor old Irtul" said Meeri, in a moment's compassion. "He's such a dunce at everything, and I bet he chose to come here because he's so unhandy! I should think he was even failing at being a cotholder's son."

"Don't waste too much sympathy on him" said Jaynor. "Our resident genius, Laghen here, and Doorm too, offered to bring him on in the self-help group if we could get some poor sap – that's Yathel – to organise it, and Irtul turned it down. "

"That is rather poor spirited of him" admitted Meeri. "Y'can't help them as won't help themselves."

"Exactly" said Vaek. "That's why I'm hoping Gwetul and Timmis will be confirmed. Journeyman Horgey – H'gey I should say as he is now – started helping them you know, before he Impressed; he had eight backward ones, though you'd not think now that Braid was among them, would you? He's confirmed for sure, 'cos he got promoted up to join the second turners for HIS hard work. But Gwetul and Timmis are plodders you know; no brilliance to add to that hard work. So I hope they get confirmed."

"You've kept them up in class though?" asked Meeri.

"Oh yes, no trouble" said Vaek.

She shrugged.

"Shouldn't be a problem then," she said, "though we'll cross our fingers and hold our thumbs and do all the other daft things people do for luck that don't change the outcome of the Masters' decision but make the Masters' little victims feel better."

"Cynic" said Vaek.

"I'm getting old. I feel cynical" said Meeri. Her fifteenth birthday was fast approaching; and she was realising with a jolt that she was really a young woman. Larking about with the younger kids was fun – and in the case of irritating Master Olodkey mightily satisfying – but she had need to think about her future. "I – I'm older than you kids though I'm not that big" she said "And I guess I feel I ought to be putting my back to the wheel so to speak. Would that offend you? I hope not."

"Like Braid" nodded Vaek. "He likes some fun but he needs to work. Hey, we'll help all we can, won't we, chaps, even if only by duffing up types who want to stop you working."

"Yeah, I guess so" said Laghen. He was still smarting under a dressing down from Master Domick for having drilled a hole in the junior class sand tray, plugged it with a cork, and then tweaked the cork away just before the lesson started. The sand had dragged away the lessons of Dekello and Jeam before their eyes, and it had been a while before Master Morshall would believe them that their writing was disappearing! Domick had overheard Laghen laughing about it with Jaynor and had asked him pointedly if he enjoyed bullying boys who found studying harder than he did; and indeed if he intended to study himself or if he preferred to waste his fertile brain on puerile tricks.

Laghen had been shocked to see it looked on as bullying, and had begged pardon of the two boys involved without being prompted. He did NOT ask forgiveness of Master Morshall.

The boys had forgiven him readily – having enjoyed the look on the dour masters face as their writing literally drained away before his eyes – but it made Laghen think.

"I don't want to give up fun" he said "But I expect I ought to work harder."

"And I need to" said Jaynor sadly. "Without you in class, either of you, Laghen and Meer, it's less fun and harder."

"Why, we must carry on working with the self help group!" said Meeri. "We've neglected you lot for the private study Master Domick sets – but it will do us no harm to revise stuff too."

"Would you? Thanks awfully!" said Jaynor. "I really don't want to fail, and half a turn's gone!"

"Course we'll hoe in and help!" said Laghen "Meer's right!"

oOoOo

Gwetul and Timmis were delighted to be confirmed when the postings were made! It heartened Jaynor, for he knew they were no better than indifferent musicians by nature and that he was marginally more talented than they. But the Unwholesome Trio and friends had actually decided to seriously turn their brains to work as well as play!

Master Domick noticed.

"You three have grown up" he said "Especially Meer."

"Can't go through life with nothing but kicks and giggles" said Meeri. "It was good having a chance to get some childhood and play games, but we're none of us getting any younger and we need to decide if we're Harpers or wastrels."

Domick surveyed her thoughtfully, and nodded.

"Well if you three put just half your talent into Harping as you have into pranks I think you'll all make Journeymen without difficulty" he said. "Knowing how much you had to catch up, Meer, I'm particularly impressed."

Meeri flushed in pleasure at the praise.

"Thank you sir" she said.

oOoOo

Domick decided that it would be a good idea for Meeri to begin her studies in gitar again; and told her so firmly. She looked dismayed.

"You mean give up working with the violin and go back to twanging instead?" she sounded horrified.

"No, a thousand times NO to giving up violin!" said Domick. "I will bring you on in gitar….it's an instrument most Holds have and you're like to have their best, such as it is, thrust into your hands with a request that you play dancing and singing music when you're travelling around – as you may find yourself doing when you make Journeyman. And I'd like to see a turn or two's good practice on you, for I can't see you being more than two turns making Journeyman at the rate you're going."

Meeri pulled a face, the pleasure of Domick's assessment of her likely progression being secondary to her dislike of gitar.

"If I've irritated you, couldn't you just spank me or put me on water rations rather than make me do that? she asked, so dolefully and with such a tragicomic face the Tunemaster had to laugh.

"Trust me, the gitar has more subtlety than you could believe; I'll teach you" he said.

"Through Fall, Fire and Fog I go to meet my fate, oh cruel Master" said Meeri.

"Sit down, shut up and start with a 'G'. You got that far, didn't you?" said Domick.

Meeri sighed, and complied. She knew much of the simple fingering; Dorasha was passionately fond of the gitar since H'gey had restrung hers for her left handedness and had been known to rehearse chords in her sleep as well as leaving music lying about with new chords scrawled in the box charts. Meeri considered it child's play to picture them for a right handed player and to recall them.

"You're doing very well" said Domick, pleased.

"I still don't have to like it, sir" said Meeri, stubbornly.

Domick surveyed her, his lips pursed in thought. Technically this was colossal cheek; but he recognised it as really no more than Meeri's innate honesty and refusal to be hypocritical.

"I wonder if I can change your mind" he said, going to cupboard and getting out another gitar. A sure touch checked it was in tune, gitars having a tendency to drift off tune by the stretching of the strings; then he sat and played. The gitar sang under his sure fingers.

Meeri was entranced; and her eyes shone as he laid it aside.

"I never knew it could be like that!" she whispered. "Why, it quite sends shivers up and down my spine!"

"Pleasurable ones I hope," said Domick dryly, "and not the sort I have trying not to listen to Irtul trying to play the violin."

"That's more like slate pencils on slate" shuddered Meeri. "I keep wanting to ask him to pour fellis into it and put the poor thing out of its misery!"

Domick guffawed at that.

"Few instruments sound worse when ineptly played than the fiddle," he said, "though horns come close!"

"Oh Dek says you can put up with horns if you imagine them as a herd of porcines fed on too many brassicas" said Meeri cheerfully. "He reckons we ought to try to set light to them."

"Yes, and he also, I'm told, holds the theory that if bovines could be persuaded to turn their backs on Thread while someone held a brand, they could sear it out of the sky three elbowlenghts before it hit the ground" said Domick. "Earthy lad, Dekello."

"Someone's got to be" said Meeri. "It did inspire me to write…." She blushed.

"What? Show me!" he demanded.

Scarlet, she fished around in her bag.

Domick read through 'The Farting Chorus', tapping the beat with one hand. He grinned.

"It'd go down well at a Gather" he said. "It's got rhythm, it's a good piece, and it's original. It may not be great music but it's well worth working up. If I were you I'd call it the 'Flatulence Fantasia' as it'll offend the tender feelings of some of our Journeymen less."

She flashed him a grin.

"Well, if you think it's worth it…. it started life being about Dek's greased porcine and got the concept of the horns added later."

"Greased Porcine?" Domick was puzzled. "Did I miss something?"

"Oops, didn't you know? We bet on him at the Spring Gather; he won and then he sold it. I never thought he'd win, you know, but it seemed rather poor spirited not to support him with a quarter mark each."

Domick shook his head.

"Greased porcines? Whatever next!" he said. "I hope it's not given you a taste for gambling? It's a mug's game."

Meeri shook her head.

"Oh! No! it was only 'cos it was Dek. I know FAR too many ways of mucking with the gees to ever bet on runnerbeasts, and the only people who play cards for money know something you don't."

"Good girl!" he approved. "Why, it's your bedtime already – you'd better run!"

Meeri ran, feeling happier about the gitar than she had previously been.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

Rumour runs always on hasty feet with bad news; and somehow all the apprentices had news that not only was Journeyman Menolly ill, but that lord Jaxom had the same complaint and had certainly died of it!

Menolly was certainly ill; and the drums called for a healer skilled in treating an illness called firehead. Young Master Sebell was white faced and distraught for several days until it was apparent his lover was out of danger, but still the rumours about Lord Jaxom persisted.

"Huh, wherry teeth" said Meeri, on finding a group of boys discussing this matter, half taunting the bossy and humourless Keilom, who came from Ruatha. "Ruth is one of the most popular dragons on Pern, he's popular with dragons as well as with firelizards. And Lord Jaxom's been flying in to the Weyr pretty much every day until he disappeared. We'd have heard the dragons keen; and certainly all the FIRELIZARDS would have keened for Ruth. They do for some dragons anyway and you KNOW how they love him. And if Lord Jaxom were dead Ruth would go _Between_ for all time. Rumour is no fact you dimglows; you hope to be Harpers and I'm ashamed to be in your class if you're all so mentally defective you can't even reason your way out of a carisak."

The boys muttered; but dispersed. The logic was unassailable.

"Thanks Meer" said Keilom.

"Huh, you've an excuse to worry: he's your Lord" said Meeri. "And even if he were at death's door they've no right to rag you… if they do it again, tell me. I can lick any one of them."

"Nor will he stand alone" said Laghen, touching Keilom's arm. "we're no friends, and I don't know much about having an overlord, but I am sorry for your concerns."

"Thanks" growled Keilom, and stalked off.

"It was well done" said a soft voice; and Meeri looked up at the tall figure of Sebell, alike enough to the Masterharper that she wondered briefly if he were Robinton's son, or nephew. Or cousin of course; she looked enough like her own cousin T'arla to be taken as her sister."

"Rumour IS no truth" Meeri said. "Sir, what IS known please?"

Sebell shrugged.

"Lord Jaxom has been iller than Menolly and took ill bathing in a distant location; but Ruth called in help. He'll be fine; Lord Groghe is going with D'ram to verify his wellbeing."

"Poking around Southern then" said Meeri thoughtfully. "WHAT a place to take ill!"

"I'll ask you to keep such speculation to yourself, apprentice" said Sebell with some asperity. Meeri grinned at him.

"Discreet as a full-fledged Harper, sir" she said.

"Good" he nodded, and strode off.

"I'll go tell Keilom his Lord Holder is expected to be fine" said Meeri. "Master Sebell didn't say we couldn't."

oOoOo

Keilom appreciated the news Meeri had discovered; and said so. He was never likely to be a close crony of hers and Laghen's; but honest boys who never forgot grudges also rarely forgot kindnesses either, and Keilom, for all his irritating manner, was an honest boy.

Domick was pleased with Meeri too and said so when she went next for gitar practice.

"I hear you've scotched a silly rumour" he said. She shrugged.

"Well, rumour is just that: rumour. And they knew I know something about dragons because of having Weyr relations. I know less than I sometimes pretend but you can't spend a couple of months in a Weyr without picking up some things."

"No, I suppose not" said Domick. "Even if it's only a desire to get one's colleagues to compose for firelizards….."

Meeri grinned.

The subject had been one for spirited debate between Domick and Shonagar at the Masters' table, Shonagar having returned from the Weyr with significant ambitions!

"Firelizards don't need writing for" she said. "They make up their own perfect counterpoint. It's dragons who like to see it written down. At least, Renpeth and Solpeth do; I don't know much about singing dragons out of the Harperweyr."

"That's because there aren't any" said Domick, dryly.

"High Reaches," said Meeri proudly, "is different. Like Ruth and Lord Jaxom. We sort of take a proprietary interest in them."

Domick laughed.

"And so does the Harper Hall. He'll be fine."

"Oh yes! Master Sebell said so" said Meeri. "And he ought to know, as Journeyman Menolly had the same thing…..they are an item, aren't they?"

"Pestiferous brat, yes they are. Now, are you going to play for me, or try to wriggle out of it by yapping like a Holderwoman?"

Meeri gave him a hurt look. She had been practising it quite hard and was quite chagrined when he laughed.

"Don't overdo it, Meer: it goes from pathos into bathos" he warned. "Now get on with it!"

Meeri got.

She was looking forward to making the gitar sing the way it did for the Master; and knew she must crawl through the preliminaries before she could even walk, let alone perform virtuoso acrobatics on it.

Domick came round behind her to correct her hold on the strings.

"You muff that B minor every time" he said. "Here, let me place your fingers…."

The touch of his hand on hers was a jolt of energy!

She turned towards him.

His eyes were dark with sudden emotion.

"Concentrate" he said. "Hold the chord."

Meeri put the gitar down.

"Why are you lying?" she said.

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.

"You felt it too. To try to act like nothing happened is lying. You KNOW it happened" she accused.

He stepped away very deliberately.

"So it happened" he said. "It is best…ignored. Sometimes such involuntary physical reactions are best if one takes no notice of them. Pick up your gitar."

His voice was remote; but Meeri's ear was well enough trained to hear that he was having to force regular breathing.

"Master…."

"Forget about it, child. It was an aberration. You have no need to fear that I would act on such. Pick up your gitar."

She scowled, but did as she was bid; her instinct was to please him, and she wanted to do well for him, even on this clumsy bovine of an instrument!

Somehow she stumbled through the exercises; and he dismissed her.

oOoOo

Domick took himself for a brisk walk before turning in.

On his return he frowned.

He did not recall leaving the glows uncovered in his bedroom; but the window was softly lit.

When he let himself in, he froze in shock.

Meeri was in his bed and he strongly suspected that she was naked.

"Get your clothes on and go back to your own bed now!" he ordered her harshly.

"But then they'll wonder who is sleeping in my bed so sound" said Meeri.

"What?" he stared.

"I arranged a curly black caprine pelt on top of my bolster" she said. "Bent in the middle for tucked up knees. It looked really lifelike. Dorasha hadn't come in then and I climbed out of the window."

Domick firmly refused to let his mouth fall open in a mix of amazement and horror.

"Well – get your clothes on, at any rate" he growled.

"Why? I don't have any blemishes to put you off."

"Meeri…. My dear child!" he cleared his throat. "Don't you see how wrong this is?"

"I'm not a child" said Meeri. "And you're not telling me that you've lived life celibate, are you? For me it's a reasonable assumption, but not for a mature man."

"No of course not….Meeri, I am a Master, you are an apprentice. I stand in place of your parents."

She gave a gurgling and wicked chuckle.

"But I wouldn't want my father to do what I want you to do" she said plaintively.

"No reasonable parent would want a young girl violated by a much older man" said Domick firmly.

"Wherry teeth! Father was talking about selling my virginity to the highest bidder at the next Gather when T'arla rescued me and took me to the Weyr; I was grateful he'd waited so long."

Domick was truly shocked and sat on the bed, white faced.

"Meeri! Truly? Yes, I see it in your eyes…. But it is wrong, and one reason it is wrong is because I have a duty of care…..even if your father betrays HIS duty of care…."

"Your body doesn't agree" said Meeri, reaching out her hand; he grabbed it before it could touch anything embarrassing.

"It's not just to you, you know" he said. "I have a duty to all the apprentices. If anyone even thought I was conducting an affair with one – and they think you are a boy, remember! – it could undermine my position and frighten other boys into thinking that I use my position to get sexual favours – or give out good marks in return for them."

"Oh!" said Meeri. "Well, I suppose there's one of two ways round that."

"What?" he asked, knowing that he should not even ask.

"Either marry me, or make sure no-one finds out" said Meeri.

"I can't marry you!" he said, aghast.

She went white.

"I see" she said. "Of course – you're an important person and I'm only a tinker brat. I – I forgot the disparity because of how much you seemed to like me."

Forgetful of her lack of attire he grabbed her shoulders to shake her.

"Little fool! It's nothing to do with your birth!" suddenly he was kissing her passionately, almost savagely; and he felt a sudden brief shock from her body and tried to bring himself to her senses as her body's reaction changed to eager response, and her arms slipped about his neck. Her lips opened under his, her body moving against him.

Domick was glad of his clothes to save him as the kiss lengthened; and at last he dragged himself from it, embarrassed that merely kissing her had brought him to sharp release.

Meeri's eyes were dark and she moaned little inarticulate cries of happiness.

Both Fugue and Snatch hummed happily on the bedboard; which did not help.

"Dom….more….?"

"I cannot marry you because it is improper for a Master to wed an apprentice; there might have been undue influence brought to bear" he said, his teeth gritted.

"Then we'll just have to be careful until I'm a Journeyman….Dom, please…"

He got off her and moved away from the bed, moving awkwardly at the now uncomfortable embassy of his pleasure.

"Meeri….what you need to understand is that where a man has indulged in light flirtation all his life, then reaches middle years and falls ridiculously in love with a girl young enough to be his daughter….young enough on paper to be his granddaughter had any of his apprentice exploits born fruit" he blushed. "Then he is afraid, totally afraid, of his own emotions, of frightening her, of taking advantage, of….of making a fool of himself" his voice was raw.

Her eyes blazed.

"You love me Domick? Truly? So hard, so jealously?"

"Shells help me, yes" he groaned.

"Then what's to worry about? I – I was afraid if you tired of me, being used to sophisticated variety, it'd be embarrassing in lesson time."

"I, tired of YOU? More likely the other way about!" he snapped.

"Oh? And who can write music to stir my belly like you do? Playing your music is almost as being kissed by you… it's like a rehearsal for it, and I want to spend my life making music with you. Rearing brats if you want 'em, though I'd rather foster out…."

"That's looking a long way into the future" he said.

"It'd be daft to embark on something without considering the future. You ought to have children and pass on the talent" said Meeri.

"Hmm, yes. I'd not be jealous of a child with more talent than me, I wager" he said dryly. "But sometimes people of talent produce ordinary children."

Meeri shrugged.

"So if we have babies who are composing symphonies in their cradles or if we have ones who are tone deaf and prefer to raise porcines for a living, it doesn't matter. So long as they feel loved and encouraged to do their own thing – whatever that is. This is too heavy a conversation, Domick, I'd want to wait for several turns before thinking of children. I want you to myself first, or I might resent them and that'd be real bad."

"It would" he said softly, ignoring her lapse into a lack of grammar. "Meeri…my dear… please leave me for now….we – we need to talk about this in – in a less emotive situation."

Meeri grinned impishly.

"I can find better use for your mouth than talking about it" she said. "All right, my dear, I'll go….but I had to force you to face it, you do understand?"

He nodded, and averted his eyes as she swung her slender body out of his bed and pulled on trews and tunic to slip out.

He lay awake for a long time in the darkness after she had gone.

And the pillow smelled of her sweet scent.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

The Drum message came through at dawn.

_**DDDD**_ Masterharper taken ill at mating flight _**DDDD**_

Meeri was out of bed in a bound, running like the wind to Domick's room, still in her nightgown, Snatch chattering madly.

Domick was pulling on trews; he did not bother with a nightshirt, and crisp black curls peeped coyly above his belt.

"Meeri, go and get some clothes on…Oldive will be on his way."

"It's Lessa's fault, silly old bag, she upset him and put a strain on him with her childish tantrums!" cried Meeri, close to a childish tantrum herself.

Domick winced.

"And the Masterharper would be the last to want to hear you accuse dragonfolk" he chided gently. "And please don't call Lessa old. She's about ten turns younger than I am."

"It's an insult not a description" said Meeri. "All right, I won't say it, but you can't stop me thinking it."

Domick sighed.

"No-one can stop ALL of us thinking it… though at least part of it's due to his drinking you know… he drinks far too much for his own good. Hop along now!"

Meeri nodded and ran back to her dormitory to dress. The others were already up the news too momentous to stay in bed.

It was an odd day. Any apprentice who knew the drum measures was up and dressed some hours before they were required to be, drifting around in little, worried, groups until the drum message rolled across the countryside,

_**DDDD **_Masterharper out of danger _**DDDD**_

Robinton was popular, a revered, if sometimes distant, father figure to so many young boys, often far from home; and even the Journeymen were not ashamed to weep tears of relief.

"I SAID he was doing too much!" Sebell's angry, tear-thickened voice could be heard drifting through an open window.

"We need a singsong, Sebell" suggested Domick. "Get them in the main Hall and get them singing; Silvina can serve klah and milk and sweet bread rolls for them."

Sebell nodded.

"Quite right…forgive me, Domick, I should not have lost my wits…there's a brat there listening in whom I suppose might run errands" he added as Meeri moved and her form became apparent at the window.

"Sir, please sir, I'm Master Domick's apprentice" she said. "Should I rally the others or run message to Silvina?"

"Run message to Silvina," said Domick. "that Acting-Masterharper Sebell wants light snacks provided for the apprentices."

"Yessir" said Meeri, flying off.

"You said what?" said Sebell.

"Rob wants you to succeed him" said Domick "And you may as well get a practice in so he can tell you if you did anything wrong when he takes back the reins of the place."

"Oh!" said Sebell, his little firelizard, Kimi, scolding Domick for shocking her Man. "But I must go to Robinton…and stop Menolly trying too!"

"Yes of course you must" said Domick. "I will stay and keep things running as I always have for Rob; I'm a good number two though I'd make a lousy Masterharper. Let me know what you can when you can" and he embraced the younger man who was so much more a son to Robinton than poor, simple Camo.

Sebell asked for a dragon to be drummed for; and left while the apprentices sang dutifully rather than enthusiastically, most of them too upset to choke down any food.

Meeri forced herself to eat.

It might be necessary to run more errands; and on an empty stomach that was unwise.

"How can you EAT?" accused Vaek. His eyes were red and blotchy.

"In the Weyr we are taught to eat at regular times regardless; even those facing Thread for the first time. At first your belly revolts, but you can make it accept by taking it slowly. It's better to have food for your body and brain to work on. If we're needed to do ANYTHING we must be fit enough and not let Master Robinton down by fainting from hunger" said Meeri.

Vaek nodded at her words; and gulped.

"Guess I'll try then… I'm not going to be outdone by any sharding smokeless weyrling" he declared.

The less drum-literate apprentices – which was by no means entirely the younger ones – were inured to sleeping through messages being sent as a general thing, and stumbled out of their beds at the normal time, gaping at the rest of their fellows who had already risen.

Naturally they were filled in on what had happened.

Silvina called for a proper breakfast; and Domick banged on the table with a spoon for attention.

"I have had a written report on the Masterharper's condition from Acting-Masterharper Sebell" he said. "Master Sebell has his own queen firelizard and Journeyman Menolly's queen, Beauty, with him to apprise us of news. The Masterharper is sleeping peacefully. The dragons," he paused to let that sink in, " – the dragons used their remarkable abilities to stay in his mind to keep him with us, to save him for us all. We owe them all a debt of gratitude; especially Ramoth and Mnementh whom he knows best. Master Oldive has suggested that when he is well enough to be moved he should go to a quiet place to convalesce; and he will want no worrying. I trust that you boys – and the few girls here – will provide exemplary behaviour for our Acting Masterharper so that Master Robinton has nothing to worry about."

There were murmurs of assent.

"Three cheers for the Masterharper and the dragons who saved him!" shouted Ferry, "and three for the Acting Masterharper and make it a round nine for Master Domick!"

The cheers were rousing!

The mood lightened, most boys fell ravenously on breakfast.

Domick decreed that lessons would take place as normal; and the masters were adjured to be lenient with any slipped concentration, especially from those who had got up so early.

"Not that ol' Morshall can even SPELL lenient" muttered Vaek, who had 'just happened' to overhear that conversation.

"P'haps Menolly will take his class to keep her occupied as she's not allowed to go _Between_ with Firehead" said Jaynor, hopefully.

"Go and ask her" said Meeri. "She just might."

"I will" said Jaynor. "Yathel? You're good with words – come with me?"

Yathel nodded.

"Sympathy for poor old Master Morshall is needed" he was saying as they left the room. "Shock to the system….not fair to be expected to teach….Menolly the next person we look to…"

"He'll go far," muttered Meeri to herself, "if he doesn't go too far first. Menolly will rumble them of course but she knows what he's like, an official reason will go down well with her."

Her own lesson of course, with Vaek and Laghen, was with Domick; and he greeted them with klah.

"I didn't think you three would be in any fit state to concentrate," said the Tunemaster, "and nor am I. I thought we might play musical lotto, with Fugue hitting a xylophone note and you filling in on your sheets if you have it."

He had written out three lotto tables with notes written on them; and a hilarious game ensued, driving away the clouds of fear and uncertainty as Domick had intended.

It was usually the most intelligent ones who were the troublesome and mischievous ones; and they too were those who often felt things the most deeply for having the imagination to borrow trouble more readily. Domick was resolved to do the same thing in the next period with Stev and Braid!

Meeri lingered as the two boys clattered off and Domick touched her face.

"A rude interruption to our own affairs….uh, business!" he realised the implications of his unintentional choice of words and blushed dull red.

Meeri caught his hand and held it against her face.

"Us to one side now" she said "Hall first…."

"You darling!" he said. "I hated to ask it of you."

She nodded.

"Harper Hall first; it must be so" she reiterated simply. "When you choose to belong, you must choose to protect what you belong to in return for its protection of you…. I guess I appreciate that more than those used to belonging and used to being protected."

He nodded.

"You are mature…sometimes with your pranks I've wondered, doubted my sanity, certainly doubted that you could handle…."

"I'm catching up on a childhood I never really had" shrugged Meeri. "I've mostly worked it out of my system; I guess you'll forgive me if it breaks out a little bit if I resent things – like Olodkey."

He nodded.

"Yes. Oh yes. I wanted to plaster him all over the drumheights with his own drumsticks for hurting you – and not just because of my partiality. Breaking the hand of any musician could destroy a promising career, and you lucky that it has healed straight! But too because my visceral desire is to look after you, my dear."

Her eyes said it all; her love, her amazement that he should want to fight for her, her acceptance that he did.

And she nodded curtly and went abruptly on to play her violin as the moment that might become dangerously close was interrupted as Stev and Braid arrived.

oOoOo

The next few days seemed a little strange and unreal; and Sebell finally brought news that a quiet place had been found in a location to be secret enough to prevent half of Pern from badgering the Masterharper.

"It's warm and beautiful and he can swim every day until he is fit and strong again" he said. "A hold is being built just for hi and a ship prepared to carry him there."

"Sir?" asked Meeri.

"Yes, Apprentice?" Sebell looked over at this importunate apprentice.

"Now he's safe, who flew Caylith?" asked Meeri. Sebell roared with laughter.

"That's the first question Masterharper Robinton asked when he regained consciousness!" he said. "It was Barnath, you cheeky pipsqueak."

"YES!" gloated Sebendum.

"Excellent!" approved Meeri. "D'ram's son is bound to be a good Weyrleader."

"What, interested in politics at your tender years?" teased Sebell.

"That's what we're Harpers for, isn't it, sir?" Meeri countered.

"Oh, and to play music occasionally!" said Sebell. "Master Robinton has sent his regards to all of you and has given me a list of those to keep my eyes on more firmly…. Let us now sing the Duty Song they he fought so hard to keep alive during the Long Interval's last decades!"

That was news to some of the boys, who remembered nothing but Thread and had learned the Duty Song as a matter of course; and it was not hard for Ferry to coax stories out of Sebell!

Sebell gave in fairly readily under the wheedling of one of the more competent young Harpers in the Hall.

Learning about history, and how easily it could be suppressed by malice and blind ignorance was as important a lesson to these young minds as any amount of musical theory; and Masterarchivist Arnor, consummate historian though he was, was also a dry and dusty teacher of what had been. Stories about people they knew drove facts in far deeper!

oOoOo

"Of course," said Domick to Meeri, when she slid into his room that evening, "Sebell is to be effective Masterharper from now on. Robinton can do without the stress of so demanding a job. He's lived through too many interesting times and driven himself too hard… we both laid blame in the shock of the moment, but that would not have touched him had he not already worn himself to a shred, and drank too deeply into the bargain."

"He'll never be well again?" Meeri was shocked.

"No, I didn't say that! He'll be well enough – providing he has enough interest for stimulation and no more! But he must never again try to bear the burden of all the troubles of Pern on his arrogant, stupid, and stubborn shoulders! That trait he has from his father, the belief that he MUST be the one to interfere….I'm sorry, love, I worry so about him; I've hero-worshipped him since I was an apprentice."

She touched his face.

"You weren't the first; and I doubt you'll be the last" she said. "He will be well if those who care for him have anything to do with it. Sebell is a strong character, he can handle it, especially with Menolly to back him and good, dedicated Masters. Do you wish to continue to stand aside from us?"

He shook his head.

"I can feel again…. For a while I was just numb. The Hall survives; and it will thrive. There have been changes of Masterharper before. I – I want now to chase away the sick fright for good, with your kisses. And, shells help me, whatever else comes of them…."

Meeri stepped up close to him and slid her arms around his waist, looking up into his eyes.

He encircled her in his arms and gazed down at her for one endless moment. Then his mouth was on hers with longing, demanding her response.

He had it; and they kissed and explored each other.

So much emotion over the past four days left little restraint in either; and at length they lay, spent, in each other's arms in the warm darkness.

"Do you snore?" asked Meeri, drowsily.

"No-one has ever said so" he replied.

"Oh well, if you do, I'll tell you" she said, into his armpit.

Domick fought to stay awake, to savour this moment forever; in case one day it was but a memory; but the struggle was unequal and his satiated lassitude slid into the black depths of deep, dreamless, satisfying sleep for the first time in days, his mind not even doing more than skating over the concept that this was probably unwise.


	13. Chapter 13

_Continued thanks to Jedi Knight 13 for taking time to review! and thanks to all reading and enjoying. _**  
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**Chapter 13**

Now that the inevitable had happened, the lovers tacitly agreed that going back to waiting would be risible; and equally tacitly agreed that the seventh day was to be theirs and otherwise Meeri was to keep to her own bed for the sake of her studies and her good health as she must needs have a good night's sleep in order to stay awake and alert to learn.

Meeri now felt quite contentedly adult; and would probably have remained entirely unlikely to be tempted by such japes as she had used to catch up on a lost childhood had she not noticed another child sporting bruises when leaving the drumroom after some rather badly beaten measures.

She took measures to make her disapprobation felt; and the next time Master Olodkey decided to take out his temper on an apprentice the drumstick shattered under the impact.

Meeri had bought the longest early whiteroot she could find from a cotholder and had split it and lovingly carved each half into a drumstick shape.

The apprentice this reprieved from painful retribution spread the story about gleefully. The look upon Master Olodkey's face when the stick he had seized up, and with which laid about the child, had just cracked had been, said the little victim, just priceless. And far too good to keep to himself.

Olodkey was furious when he realised what had been done, and his bellow could be heard all across the Harper Hall. The story lost nothing in the telling and countless youths who had suffered painful bruises hugged themselves in glee and secretly hoped that the perpetrator of THAT joke would never be caught. Rumour hinted that if the Drummaster ever caught the author of the vegetable sticks there would be a new drum from the hide skinned from the living body of that unfortunate.

oOoOo

"WHAT am I going to do with you Meer, you bad child?" Domick sighed when the Unwholesome Trio were assembled for a lesson. "It WAS you, I have no doubt?"

"Oh yes" said Meeri. "Perhaps you ought to spank me?" she looked at him wide eyed.

Domick spluttered.

"Yes I fardling well will" he said "Then at least I can say that I found and punished the culprit. Over the sand tray if you please."

The spanking with his slipper was sharp and not entirely as Meeri had intended in her teasing suggestion; and she took the rebuke to heart. Her lover was not to be teased over discipline.

"Cuh!" said Laghen, as they left the room after the lesson "Didn't think old Domick did corporal punishment!"

"Just as well I didn't do what was my first intention" said Meeri. "I had planned to purloin the piece the fourth-turners are working on and copy the drum line in single letter notation saying 'Olodkey stinks' because it happens to fit the rhythm rather nicely."

Vaek and Laghen roared with laughter.

"He'd be seriously waxy over that," said Vaek, "for it's one of Domick's own scores!"

Meeri grinned again.

"Well I'd not even consider interfering with the score of anyone I wasn't special apprentice too" she said "But actually I thought it might not be such a good thing after all. I mean, there might be a visitor who knows the letter-by-letter notation who might hear it and that would not do. I might tell Master Domick that I didn't do it though" she added.

"Mad" said Vaek.

Meeri did duly confess to what she had not done, and why; and his rebuke to her backside for even considering it was in a somewhat different vein to the disciplinary one and led to both missing the noon meal.

"But seriously, love, lay off Olodkey from now" said Domick, kissing her. "You've made your point; any more would go beyond making a point and I could not legitimately shield you from his wrath. And any more would move away from rebuke and into a hate campaign, and that's a form of bullying you know. Don't fall to that level."

Meeri nodded.

"Understood" she said. "All right; it ends now, I promise."

oOoOo

Meeri was surprised a few days later to see Domick scowling at her, his face like thunder and disappointment written all over it.

"How could you, after you promised?" he snarled at her.

Meeri stared, aghast.

"What am I supposed to have done?" she cried, injured.

"Are you saying that it wasn't you who filled the message drum with flour?" he demanded.

"DOMICK! Do you really think I'd interfere with the message drum? Grant me common sense, even if you have decided that you don't trust a tinker brat's word!" Meeri stormed out, tears of hurt and anger running down her face. If he could not trust her, how could he then love her?

She ran slap into Masterharper Sebell; who caught her shoulders and searched her stricken face with his eyes, and let the irritation in his own face soften.

"No, boy, it wasn't you, was it?" he said quietly.

"No it fardling well wasn't sir!" Meeri almost yelled. "Only a lame-brain would tinker with something like a message drum – it's – it's almost as bad as teasing a watchwher!"

Sebell gave a cynical half smile.

"Somebody's a lame brain then" he said. "Go back to your class, lad."

"I'm sorry sir, I don't think I can" said Meeri. "Master Domick impugned my honour and my word, for I swore to him, no more tricks; and I need to cool down."

"I expect he felt as slighted by believing he had been let down," said Sebell, "fearing that he had misplaced trust…I gather you had a vendetta that he has disciplined you for; please don't begin a vendetta against Master Domick for an honest mistake."

Tears flowed freely.

"I thought he knew me better" said Meeri bitterly.

Sebell suppressed the raising of an eyebrow; some specie of hero-worship feeling betrayed by the hero, he suspected. Domick might not like small boys treating him to the same, but Sebell fancied he'd miss losing the confidence of one of his specials if the lad was inclined to be unforgiving.

"Go and cool down then; and go to my office to do so. You may be private there as I shan't be using it. Report to Master Domick when you feel more calm" he said. The acting Masterharper nodded to Meeri and went up towards Domick's room.

Meeri took the Masterharper's advice and went to his room, spartan but serene, like the young Master himself.

She managed to get herself under control and was wondering whether she and Domick were going to be able to cope with their first lovers' quarrel, whether it was just that he was afraid to trust or whether deep down he did consider her incapable of honour as she did so. And then, without knocking, Master Olodkey came in. He looked at her and his eyes flared in anger.

"It was you, was it, you filthy little misbegotten child of filth? Well you'll suffer for risking Hall and Hold, and I'll see you suffer! Before you are expelled!" he took off his belt.

"I would NEVER fill a MESSAGE drum with anything muffling" said Meeri, her eyes sparkling in anger. "I admit to the feathers and rags – in the PRACTICE drum. And Master Domick already gave me discipline for every minor trick I have perpetrated of that nature to rebuke a bully, but I'm no dangerous fool!"

"Huh, all you boys are liars!" Olodkey advanced on her, Snatch crying out in fear, his eyes whirling orange, dodging _Between_ as the belt buckle whistled through the air too near him.

Olodkey seized Meeri by the arm and started laying into her with the buckle end of his belt.

Meeri scorned to cry out.

Her father had administered plenty of beatings with whatever had come to hand, and the Drum Master was concentrating on her back and buttocks, and she could keep her arms and hands out of reach of his violent vengeance.

The pain stopped abruptly with the sound of a 'CRACK!' and a thud; then she was in Domick's embrace.

"Little one, I'm sorry, so sorry…. I should have known you are as true as the music you write….will you forgive me?" he begged, cradling her against him.

"Dom, oh DOM!" she clung to him. "You thought that a dragon never changes colour I suppose… that it was so like the earlier pranks…. But even if I were stupid to possibly risk life, I'd never repeat, it would be so unimaginative!"

"I know… of course I know… I knew really when I shouted at you, but it was so serious, Sebell though it must originate in the same brain as the other tricks did….."

"HE Acquitted me; he could see in my face" said Meeri, a trifle resentfully.

"So could I; but by then you'd flung out, and I couldn't leave Vaek and Laghen to run after you; it would have been unseemly. My dear, we must get numbweed…"

She shrugged, and winced for doing so.

"He's too old and unfit to hit bad" she said dismissively, glaring at the unconscious figure on the floor. "Oh Dom, did you lay him out for me?"

"Too fardling right I did" her Master growled. "If he weren't the best sharding drummer and the best at unravelling distraught messages for the Healer Hall, I'd see if I could get him relieved of duty for this – it's an unconscionable cheek, even if he thought you guilty, when the Masterharper has taken the investigation on himself!"

Olodkey stirred and groaned.

"Take me away from here" said Meeri. "Let me come to your room."

"Once you've seen numbweed" said Domick.

"You have some in your room" said Meeri.

"All right… I'd have liked Silvina to see this though" said Domick.

Sebell's pleasant voice sounded from the doorway.

"Whatever is going on? I leave my room a few minutes and I come back to find that a brawl has taken place by the looks of it!"

Olodkey struggled to sit up.

"He hit me!" he declared groggily.

"Yes I did – for taking matters into your own hands without even troubling to ascertain truth" said Domick quietly. "Sebell, he was beating Meeri with the buckle of his belt."

"Olodkey, go and wash your face and finish overseeing restoring the drum" said Sebell coldly. "We'll talk more about this when there are no apprentices in earshot. Domick, see the lad gets numbweed and ask if he can think who might have done this stupid piece of mischief."

"I haven't a clue, Masterharper" Meeri answered for herself. "But I'll ask my friends and other classmates if you'll promise to keep that….Master… off them if they'll come to you if they had a brain-addled moment."

"I'd appreciate it" said Sebell gravely, deciding not to haul the apprentice up for cheek. Being beaten very severely, judging by the blood on the child's tunic, for something the apprentice had not done was enough to make anyone less than respectful towards the person responsible.

oOoOo

Domick slathered numbweed on the several bleeding contusions on Meeri's back, buttocks and hips, muttering darkly.

"I love you so well" he said "I – I was devastated to think…"

"'Sh, it's over… you knew deep down it wasn't me, didn't you?" her eyes pleaded, twisting to look over her shoulder at him.

He nodded.

"I did… I – I told myself I'd been let down, and that I was fooling myself, and that made me angrier. I'll never doubt your word again. I was a fool."

"And my vendetta sparked your lack of belief in me…we've blame to take, both of us, so let's put it behind us and kiss and make up?" she got up as he finished his ministrations and put up her face to him.

He kissed her hungrily; and as he sank to the bed drew her onto him to love her gently and tenderly so that her back might not receive the abuse of being pressed to the bed.

oOoOo

None of Meeri's friends could shed any light on the incident of the message drum; all were as perplexed as she, and said so.

"Huh, you lot are so full of yourselves, you don't think anyone else can pull jokes!" said Irtul, smiling.

"Irtul," said Meeri, "are you telling me you are such a dim-glowed unmitigated ass that you can't tell the difference between a prank and a potentially life-threatening stunt like this?"

Irtul stared.

"What's life threatening about it?" he asked.

"What's the message drum used for?" said Meeri, with careful patience.

"Well to send messages of course" said Irtul.

"So, suppose the message arrives that Lessa of Benden has certain symptoms and Master Oldive asks to have relief treatment sent by drum while he's packing the instruments and medicines he needs to take to her?" said Meeri. "And with the message drum full of flour, the message can't be sent and then possibly Lessa dies, and a Golden Queen goes _Between_ for all time because the immediate relief could not be sent. That's probably a worst case scenario; but such is possible!" Meeri's patience had slipped and her eyes were snapping in anger. "My own thrashing from Olodkey thinking me the culprit I can forgive you for; but to forgive you for risking lives is a little harder. But if you really ARE such a numbskull, I'll readily go with you to support you when you confess to Master Sebell, and seeing that it didn't occur to you to employ the wherry feathers you call your brain before acting, I'll even intercede on your behalf."

Irtul blinked.

"Why would I go to Master Sebell?" he asked, confused.

"How about because with something this serious, it's the straight thing to do?" said Meeri. "And if you don't go of your own accord, I shall."

"You'd sneak? I never sneaked on YOU!" said Irtul, indignantly.

"Sneaking is about puerile pranks – not something serious like this. We're all under a cloud that could. I'm guessing, get the whole class expelled for unharper-like conduct until someone confesses and Master Sebell knows it was only stupidity and the desire for a poor sap to look big. There's been some outrage from people about the Healer Hall reviving old techniques and I shouldn't be surprised," guessed Meeri with a fairly accurate surmise, "if it wasn't crossing the Masterharper's mind that it might be an attempt to muffle the Healers by way of a protest. You wanted to make us admire you – well, that sort of wherry-headed stunt is only going to make us despise you unless you've the backbone to own up!"

"Shan't either; and he won't believe you!" said Irtul "Because you've played pranks before!"

"Are you sure it's not sneaking?" asked Jaynor.

"If one of the boys was trying to strangle another, would you keep quiet or go for help?" asked Meeri.

"I'd lay him out actually. You mean if I couldn't get to him to stop it? I guess I'd have to go for help" said Jaynor. "Is it really the same?"

"It's a matter of risk to life; a real damage thing" said Meeri. "And so then it's not sneaking, because the fardling eejit still doesn't understand why it wasn't a prank, I can see in his eyes that my explanation went right through from one ear and out the other without connecting with any of the limited matter he keeps in between. And that means if I can't get him to realise how stupid it is, he needs a Master to explain before he pulls a stunt that kills himself or someone else. In case next time he copies the dropping of grey spaghetti from the fireheights and decides a rock would be funnier and it kills someone. Because he's stupid enough to only copy ideas and think it's clever and has more impact if he does it the same only bigger."

Jaynor nodded, his gaze on Irtul one of scorn.

"So, are you going to Master Sebell?" Jaynor asked the other boy.

"No" said Irtul.

"C'mon boys" said Jaynor.

Irtul was trussed up like a Turnover wherry and carried bodily to Master Sebell's office.

"He wouldn't be a man and speak up for himself, so we're disinclined to excuse him and speak up in his defence" said Laghen.

"He's an eejit, Masterharper, but not deliberately dangerous" said Meeri "But he needs the point explained by a Master to help him be less of an eejit because there's no real intent of harm in him."

Menolly, in the office too, had hidden a smile at Laghen's laconic and world-weary tone of explanation and dissolved entirely into laughter at Meeri's dismissive attitude.

"Damned with faint praise" murmured Sebell, starting to undo the boy's bonds. "Thank you, the rest of you may go."

He had, after all, to preserve the dignity of the situation, as anticlimactic as it had turned out to be; and Menolly took the opportunity to flee too and hide her whoops of mirth over the matter of fact delivery of the culprit.

They went off gloomily, secure in the knowledge that they had done their duty; but not happy about it. The potential threat of all losing their apprenticeships, which Meeri had guessed might happen to make sure that one dangerous child was expelled, had removed any sympathy any might have felt for Irtul.

"And why Journeyman Menolly was killing herself with laughter in the Masterharper's office when we delivered the eejit, I really can't imagine" said Jaynor in a hurt tone.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

Irtul returned to class tearstained and subdued.

"'Course, we ought to give him blow for blow what Meer took – you said Olodkey beat you?" said Yathel, who liked to organise things so long as they were lawful.

"It's no big deal" said Meeri. "I've had worse from my father. Besides, it's not for us to discipline Irtul; I guess the Masterharper knows his own business, you know."

"Master Sebell is very new and young" said Yathel.

"And well trained to the position by Master Robinton" said Meeri. "Whatever imposition he's laid on Irtul is between them and none of our business, and as I was the one beaten if I'M ready to say so I guess nobody else has a right to make any comment. Though I have to say I can't see that Irtul can reasonably expect to be given much in the way of respect from the rest of us."

"I'll say not!" said Laghen. "When your little firelizard arrived all in a panic, chirping at Master Domick's Fugue, I never see him look so bad – ol' Domick I mean – so I guess he got images?"

"Probably; but I don't despise Irtul for that" said Meeri. "I didn't mind taking the licks, I'd done enough other stuff to deserve them after all, 'cos Master Domick's fairly easy going about minor pranks. It's for being an idiot and refusing to acknowledge it that puts me to despising the little fool. If he cared to apologise now, I guess I could manage to find some manhood in him, but I dare say he won't."

Irtul hunched his shoulder and turned away; and Meeri sighed.

She had given him every opportunity to make amends and gain some modicum of respect. He was such a bump on a log! The trouble was, he was a bump on a log that was liable to drop off the tree on the heads of passers-by, and unpredictably, like elm trees. She knew never to rest under elm trees of course, as any Holdless wanderer should. Well, let him stew in his own juice. He would probably not be confirmed at the end of the turn in any case; Irtul had no talent or even the ability to slog, he was one who had chosen Harping as a supposed soft option and was finding it no such thing. And as he had been stupid enough to turn down belonging to the self help group, serve him right.

oOoOo

The boys wanted Meeri to strip her shirt and show her scars of war; and she laughed.

"Oh, I keep telling you, it's nothing! Hardly any cuts at all, nothing but bruises" she said, not realising that such was horrifying enough to most of them.

"Your father sounds a bit of a stinker if that's nothing" said Laghen.

"When I'm a bit better grown, I'm going to take my mother and siblings off him and take them to the Weyr" swore Meeri "And if he makes trouble over it, I'm going to kill him."

Several boys shuddered at her matter of fact and chilling tone.

Laghen however nodded.

"Met types like him" he said laconically. "Whack their kids for any little thing, draw blade on a man for any perceived insult. Like that, is he?"

Meeri nodded.

"Pretty much" she said. "It's why Uncle Poley – cousin really, the uncle is a courtesy – won't travel with him. Hey, can we forget this? I've stuff to work on and I don't want to be gloomed up when I craft variations on Menolly's frothier pieces. Master Domick's comments on adding minor key variations would sting worse than any physical blow."

oOoOo

Domick was particularly attentive to his lover over the ensuing days, conscious of how he had nearly lost her by a moment's foolish suspicion; and he was desperate to make up to her for that.

"I think I'll go talk to Rob as soon as he's well enough" he said to her. "It'll give him a pie to stick his finger in that isn't Pern-shattering if he feels he can tease me about a romance… and ask him if he thinks it's reasonable to wed you while you're still an apprentice. If you'd still like to" he added hastily.

"Domick, my darling, what could I like more?" she said, wrapping her arms around him. "I suppose I'd better think about wearing dresses occasionally to come clean… I was going to wait until I was posted confirmed."

"You may as well do that" said Domick. "Unless the herbs fail, we can wait until then, it's only a few months; unless Rob thinks we should wait longer."

"What about Master Sebell?" asked Meeri. "Isn't it more his business now?"

"Yes; but Rob's one of my closest friends. I'd have said one of my oldest friends only he'd quip 'less of the old'. I'd like to talk it over with him before I tell Sebell. Sebell doesn't even know you're a girl yet."

Meeri chortled.

"That's because he only has eyes for Menolly" she said.

"And that's how it should be, you minx; as I have only got eyes for you."

She lifted up her mouth for a kiss and was promptly rewarded with one.

It was a bad piece of timing.

The knock at the door was immediately followed by it opening, and they had not disengaged from the embrace with each other when Irtul of all people came in. He gaped; and fled precipitately.

"What the fardling shards did he want?" growled Meeri. "I suppose the silly little tail fork was running a message and has clean forgotten it.

"That'll REALLY add to his likelihood of staying" said Domick sarcastically. "You'd better be about your practising, love; he might just have the balls to come back."

"Hah, the victory of hope over experience" said Meeri, picking up her violin. "I'm glad you've deciphered some of these old pieces from the archive, I really like some of them, and the 'Air on a G-string' is moderately challenging to play on just one string."

"It's how it must have been intended to be played, however, or it would not be named thus" said Domick. "Carry on."

oOoOo

Meeri left practice happily and wandered into the common room where the apprentices were able to meet and play indoor games and chat. Her entry coincided with Irtul's shrill and indignant tones.

"It's TRUE I tell you – Domick is one of THOSE sort, else why is he always being visited by Blue Riders?"

The boy had conveniently forgotten Bronze Rider L'gal and female Green Rider T'arla. Of the Blue Riders he knew, only T'rin had a dragon large enough to fly and Meeri laughed to herself at the foolish exaggerating and the inferences drawn by the silly boy.

"You're talking wherry-dung" snapped Laghen. "Meer and Master Domick in a clinch? You've got it all wrong again you poor sap, I expect Master Domick was checking how the scars were healing that YOU got Meer to have!"

"He wasn't stripped at all but they were in a clinch!" insisted Irtul, stubbornly.

"Irtul, you are a poor sap" said Meeri scornfully as she walked in. "When you interrupted my practice, did you have a purpose, or was it just a fit of nosy interference? What I mean is, should either I or Master Domick have received a message that you failed to deliver?"

"I had a message for him" said Irtul, sulkily. "You can't deny it!"

"I have no intention of denying that you had a message for him, my good ass" said Meeri "And if it was important, m'lad, you are surely for it when he finds out what it was and that you failed to deliver it!"

"I didn't mean that, I mean you can't deny being in a clinch with Master Domick!" shrilled the boy.

"You wherry-headed little funk, why would I feel any need to deny your wild firelizard hatching? Hey, look, can't you see my wedding band on my finger where I wed my husband?" she wriggled a ringless finger in front of his nose. "Oh boys, I swoon that you know my secret!" she put on a silly falsetto and passed a histrionic hand in front of her face.

He friends roared with laughter, and Irtul reddened with embarrassment and anger.

"I SAW you!" he insisted.

"I saw you too; but not for long enough for you to have avoided being in hot water by delivering the message" said Meeri scornfully. "Irtul, you always have been boring; stop bleating the same nonsense over and over or someone might want to make you into a lambskin jacket. You're trying again to make yourself look big by making mischief, and again all it does is make you look small. I never knew a boy with such a capacity to lose potential friends as you."

"I'd not want to be friends with you, you – you – unnatural actist you!"

Meeri's laugh was quite genuine. She had learned enough in the Weyr not to consider homosexual relations to be unnatural; though she knew that such a rumour would be bad for Domick in the hidebound world out of the Weyr.

Her friends had never for a moment believed Irtul's story anyway, thinking it made up from spite. Irtul pointed at her.

"You put such value in your word – can you SWEAR it's not true?" he said dramatically.

"I don't see why by the First Shell I should" said Meeri.

"Oh let's just shut him up by you giving your word" said Laghen. Meeri shrugged.

"I swear solemnly that I'm not conducting a homosexual affaire with anyone; nor indeed have I homosexual urges as if it mattered a toss. I'm interested in the opposite sex and before you go rifling in my papers you sneaky little puddle of fork juice, yes there are love songs to a particular person and if any of them get out I'm going to whack you so hard you'd be glad of a session with Master Olodkey and his drumsticks or his belt end" she added with low intensity.

Laghen pummelled her arm.

"Sorry; had to shut him up" he said.

Irtul was looking at her with baffled fury.

"I'll PROVE you're lying!" he squeaked, and stalked off.

"Way his arse waggles in his fury, reckon he wants to be the one to worry if there are any proddy Blue Riders of such disposition around" remarked Meeri.

There was laughter.

Meeri's word was certainly considered good; and Irtul's was not. And indeed, Meeri had spoken the absolute truth; and how people took that was their own business to her mind.

oOoOo

Meeri nodded to Laghen, Dekello and Jaynor to follow her; and led them towards the river.

"Uh… we're out of bounds about now at this time of evening" said Jaynor.

"Fardles take the bounds" said Meeri. "You three: every word I spoke was true, but I want you to swear through Fall, Fire and Fog that what I'm going to tell you, you will keep to yourselves unless there's real good reason to reveal it."

"Of course" said Laghen.

"We swear" said Jaynor. Dekello nodded vehemently.

"All right…" said Meeri, taking a deep breath. "I'm not a boy, I'm a girl. Meeri is an effeminate name, spelled with an i, not –ey like you thought, because it's a girl's name. I'm not lying as such just…not telling all the truth. It's easier. It's why I'm in the dorm I'm in; sharing with Dorasha. Vaek knows; he was told off to look out for me when I arrived."

They stared.

"Does the Masterharper know?" asked Jaynor, finding his tongue first.

"Master Robinton does anyhow" said Meeri. "Uh, so does Master Domick."

"So, uh, Meer – Meeri – er…. well are you conducting an affaire with him?" asked Laghen flushing, "and did the poor sap catch you in a clinch?"

"The little shard-head came in just after Domick proposed to me and I accepted" said Meeri. "It was the most excruciatingly bad timing. Well I told you I was older than you types, didn't I?"

"How much older?" asked Dekello.

"I'm Turned fifteen and more; I had my birthing day anniversary on the day of the Mating Flight, but so much else was happening…"

"I'll say" said Laghen with feeling. "So you and Master Domick are in LOVE?" he sounded half disgusted at so soppy a state of affairs. "But he SPANKED you!" he added.

"He almost had to" said Meeri, deciding not to mention that spanking need not necessarily be undesirable; it was a little beyond thirteen-turn boys. "He thought it better than letting Master Olodkey do it" and that was true enough; even a disciplinary spanking from Dom had to be an improvement on Olodkey's vicious ministrations.

"Jays, yes!" Laghen agreed fervently.

"Well, whatever mischief Irtul cooks up, we'll stand by you" said Jaynor. "You're as GOOD as any boy, any day!"

"And more a man than Irtul will ever be" said Dekello.

oOoOo

By lunchtime next day, a drumheights apprentice had spread all round the Harper Hall that Master Olodkey had received an anonymous note declaring that Master Domick was having an homosexual affaire with an apprentice called Meer; and that Olodkey had rather indiscreetly said, and the apprentice gleefully quoted,

"So THAT was why he knocked me down over whacking the little turd!" at which he had crumpled and thrown the note in the corner of the room. Whence the even more indiscreet and nosy apprentice had retrieved it.

The indiscreet apprentice sported several bruises from having been leaped upon by both Lisend and Stev – separately – Lisend to teach him discretion, and Stev for slandering Master Domick.

Sebell was furious.

He addressed the Hall.

"Rumours of a certain kind have come to my notice," he said, "spread by that vilest and most cowardly of communiqués, the anonymous letter. Any boy who would write such poison is sick in the head and should report to Masterhealer Oldive right away. An investigation WILL be held; and I assure you that the spreading of lies and innuendo is NOT going to be permitted to continue."

"Sir, why would anyone make an unfounded accusation?" asked a senior apprentice, greatly daring. "No smoke without fire, they say."

"The smoke here is just so much steam issuing from the babbling of a fevered brain" said Sebell firmly. "And if anyone thinks reasonably, if anyone, especially a Master, were in the habit of behaving improperly, such would have emerged long since. There are unwritten rules in the Harper Hall that any homosexual relationship may not take place between persons under seventeen turns old, to be sure they are certain of their own sexuality. No, it is NOT forbidden" he added as there was a rising babble. "We of the Harper Hall are not ignorant and bigoted like some of the less educated folk around and accept that some people have alternative practices – providing they are discreet. And that is another reason why the age restriction is in force; because youngsters can rarely be expected to be discreet. Since Harper apprentices are likely to be able to ferret out almost any secret I doubt that any inappropriate behaviour would remain secret for long however. My own attachment to Journeyman Menolly is, I believe, quite common knowledge."

There were murmurs of assent except from some of the youngest who had no idea about adult relations and cared less.

Sebell did not point out that if anything homosexual relationships were encouraged in the Harper Hall where they developed, since with the climate of disapproval those young men of such inclination tended to be very good at both discretion and even secrecy; which were useful commodities when Harpers were called on to spy.

oOoOo

"Of course we all know who wrote that poisonous rubbish" said Meeri to her friends. "WHAT a complete and utter ass Irtul is! If he'd left well alone he's have been laughed at for a while and it would have blown over. Now he's only gone and made the Masterharper most waxy again!"

"You're not going to sneak him up?" asked Laghen, anxiously, wondering if it would be just like a girl to do so!

Meeri snorted.

"Of course not! But the wherry-headed little eejit is such an incompetent plotter he'll only manage to give himself away somehow!"

The others laughed.

"That's First Shell's own truth" said Dekello.

oOoOo

As it was, Irtul was busy boasting to others that now the Masterharper had promised an investigation the lies of that Meer would be revealed; and his high pitched voice carried right up to the ears of the Masterharper, whose window was open.

Sebell leaned over the sill; and the last words anyone heard spoken to the boy were,

"Irtul…come up here. Now."

According to sources – mainly Braid – Irtul left from Fort Seahold on the first ship heading east.

The Harper Hall heard from the Masterharper was at the next meal.

"The next time anyone wants to cause trouble, let them remember that it is more likely to rebound upon their own head" Sebell said in his beautiful carrying voice. "Anonymous letters and accusation based on slender conjecture are despicable."

He had already been informed laconically by Domick that the furore had been because Meeri was female, that Irtul had jumped to conclusions and had decided to gossip instead of asking questions quietly. He further mentioned that Master Robinton had been well aware of Meeri's gender but in the light of all the other things that had been going on it had seemed a superfluous piece of information to trouble the new Masterharper over. Once Sebell understood that Domick planned marriage and no short term relationship he withdrew any objections and proceeded to inform the unfortunate Irtul that being busy without ascertaining the facts of the matter was hardly what one expected of a Harper, but that if Irtul had suspected that the female apprentice in his class was being coerced he, Irtul, should have informed the Masterharper not spread malicious and inaccurate rumours. And it was for the malicious anonymous letter that he was being sent home, not for jumping to erroneous conclusions.

Irtul, it may be said, had whined that it wasn't fair and that he did not see how Meer could be a girl because how could a girl keep up with boys in class when everyone knew that girls were stupid.

Sebell was glad to see him go.

And the Masterharper proceeded thereafter to ignore Meeri's gender as much as her friends did.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

The minds of the apprentices were to be rapidly distracted from any sordid rumours in the arrival of a new female apprentice.

As most of the boys were now more open minded than Irtul she was merely a matter of curiosity not scorn, though some of the older ones eyed her with some speculation before coming to the conclusion that she seemed too much of a child to be interested in being chatted up.

The girl's name was Irette; and she was the same age as Meeri, though she seemed much younger. Master Sebell called on Meeri to show the girl about and help her settle into the dormitory. The Masterharper might be indifferent to Meeri's gender but he had not forgotten it.

Irette was positively bubbling with glee at being in the Harper Hall, and explained that she had had some preparation from a Master in a small Hold, but that she had suffered an accident that had held her up a little but at least she'd not have to marry someone she referred to as the Bucktoothed Wonder.

This Meeri unravelled from what she later described to her friends as 'a positive deluge of logorrhoea' and then had to explain that where diarrhoea was an excess of fork juice, logorrhoea was an excess of words.

"You made it up" declared Laghen.

"Didn't either" said Meeri "Master Domick accused me of it and I had to ask. GREAT word, isn't it?"

"It is rather" said Vaek "And I'm so jealous that you managed to work it into a sentence in context. I guess we'll all have to rise to the challenge."

The Masters and teaching Journeymen were used to apprentices being logorrheic even if they would not have described it that way but not to them using the word. Dekello got dragged before the Masterharper for refusing to apologise for making up words, and a journeyman found himself with egg on his face when Sebell pointed out that a lad could scarcely be expected to apologise for something he had not done. Dekello was also set to write out logorrhoea in letter by letter drum notation ten times for being cheeky about his insistence and to preserve the face of the Journeyman involved and declared it worth while to see the know-it-all's face over being wrong.

The word became very well known until Master Sebell placed an embargo on it save in totally justifiable circumstances as it was becoming boring.

Meanwhile, Meeri was finding Irette to be extremely immature; and treated her accordingly.

Fortunately Irette was used to being the youngest of the group of fosterlings where she had received her training, a Runnerhold named Northfork; and she seemed to take Meeri treating her like a younger apprentice in her stride. Before long she had confided to Meeri that she had tried to leap a chasm when out riding and had been thrown; and that one of the other girls had saved her life by holding her up as her grasp failed until help arrived, the other girl damaging her back in the process.

"And she's not going to be well for months" said Irette. "I'll ALWAYS think before I act in the future!"

Meeri was shocked!

"A great comfort that must be to your injured friend" she murmured with heavy sarcasm.

"Oh she says it's very encouraging!" declared Irette, blithely unaware of any sarcastic inflexion.

Meeri reflected that so thick a skin would make Irette unlikely to suffer much from being new, or from comments from the few boys who were dubious of female attainments. She would not suffer from being backward, for the intense coaching she had received had brought her almost to the standard of the rest of the class; and her voice was of good enough quality to please Master Shonagar. The girl was Ranking by birth; so Meeri passed her over to Kimmet whom she adjudged 'mostly harmless' and left her to it. How much trouble could one immature girl cause, after all, however feckless?

Besides, Kimmet was too lazy to get into trouble; and really it was companions who made playing the fool worth doing!

oOoOo

Irette could still manage to produce some irritations; forgetting her drying cloth in the mornings and delaying the girls bathing being one such irritation, that threatened to make the boys late; so Meeri suggested to Kerill that the boys just come in at their allotted time and get on with it.

Being invaded by five teenage boys undressing before she was properly dressed soon taught Irette to remember all the kit she needed as moaning at her had not! She did not like it however and decided it was not to be born. It was to Dorasha that the girl complained over this outrage, as head of the girls' section and Dorasha shrugged.

"Well, will you then take all the punishments, five lots of it, for being late, that the boys would receive? A beating with a drum stick for Lisend from Master Olodkey – and his beatings are cruel – three hours of crafting music variations to teach the value of time from Master Domick for Stev, a water diet for a couple of the others and time cleaning up after class for Master Jerint? Because that's what being late means to them, and it's in the rules that nobody skips breakfast however late they are. WE have the courtesy of bathing first in the bathing room – and they take a shorter time for our convenience. The least you can do is think of THEIR convenience."

Irette swallowed.

"I'm sorry; I didn't understand that."

"Then you should have listened harder when Meeri explained the morning routine to you; which she did, for I was there and heard her do so. You're a Harper; use your ears occasionally as well as your mouth."

Irette flushed, but nodded, actually silenced!

Between causing Vorinia's disastrous injury and coming to terms with the harsh realities of apprentice life – easy and pleasant enough for those who stuck to the rules and did not irritate others, harder for those who did not comply – she was beginning finally to learn to think before acting and to be less careless!

True, she was quickly on a water diet for speaking back to Master Morshall – she told him she was hurt by a piece of criticism she did not feel to be valid – but she soon learned that the crabby Master had few good words for anyone, even those Irette recognised as better than herself! Moreover the boys teased her roundly about the incident, and Irette really disliked being teased by a load of quite little boys, all under fourteen turns and down to young Lantor who was not Turned eleven. Irette was used to small boys; seaholdbred, she had never been used to much privacy and she did not really resent the teasing, taking it as normal; but she did NOT want to open herself to having it happen again! She turned her attention to trying to work her way into a class with others closer to her in turns, hoping to eventually join Dorasha!

oOoOo

It may be said that Meeri largely ignored Irette after having done her duty of showing the other girl about and palming her off onto Kimmet.

Meeri had her own group of friends; that they were several turns younger than her bothered her not one whit, for she was used to being the eldest of younger siblings. And she had Domick for more adult conversation.

Irette was, so far as Meeri was concerned, just another apprentice with whom she had very little in common; and if she had known that it was anticipated that she would have been pleased to have a girl friend of her own age she would have been much surprised.

oOoOo

As the winter was presaged, by cold winds and lashing rain, after a warm autumn, Meeri had more on her mind than stray female apprentices. She counted on her fingers several times; then shrugged and went to see Domick.

"Dom, I think the herbs have failed" she said. "I counted and re-counted and it's six sevendays since I last bled."

"Aren't you supposed to feel sick in the mornings?" asked Domick.

"Well I guess that not everyone does," shrugged Meeri, "since I don't. We were going to wait, I know; do you want me to ask T'arla for a trip _Between_?"

Domick blinked.

"That's not a decision for me to make, my dear" he said, gently cupping her face in his hands. "It's your body that is carrying our child. If you are not ready, I fully support you taking it _Between_; but if you don't wish to do so, you know I'll stand by you. We always meant to wed anyway."

Meeri nodded.

"It seems kind of unfair if the sprog has survived all the herbs I've taken to shuffle him or her off" she said. "I mean, you have to admire all that tenacity. So long as you can cope with fatherhood."

Domick grinned.

"I love the way you look at things, love" he said. "I am as ready as I'll ever be too, for a, er, tenacious offspring. Shall we get married right away?"

"If that would please you….can we do it quietly? Just Master Sebell and Menolly and my closest friends to witness?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I don't see why not. And of course T'arla and L'gal as well; a Bronze Rider as a witness will be a good addition to the Masterharper if any make waves about it being hole-in-a-corner. I'll see Sebell right away, and you send Snatch with a message to your cousin."

oOoOo

"That was a hurried summons to a wedding" said T'arla to her young cousin. "Almost as hasty as a holderwoman with a bun in the oven" and she looked narrowly at Meeri. "Don't tell me that you got caught and he feels he ought to wed you?"

"We got caught and we were going to be wed anyhow" said Meeri, shortly. "He said it was up to me whether I asked you to take me _Between _ or not and I decided not. I take fate as it comes."

T'arla nodded.

"It's a very High Reaches way of looking at things" she said. Meeri took that as approval.

No-one would be able to say she was not properly married, anyway; with a Master Harper – indeed, essentially THE Masterharper now – officiating, two dragonriders witnessing and a whole variety of Harpers in the persons of Journeyman Menolly and Meeri's own closest friends.

Jaynor, Dekello, Laghen and Vaek were delighted to be asked!

"When are you going to dress as a girl?" asked Vaek. "If you're getting wed in a hurry I guess you'll want to be pretty before you get fat and cross."

"Tact NOT his strongest point" said Domick to no-one in particular. "Vaek, she is a beautiful woman. She will still be beautiful when she is in a gravid state. 'Fat' is NOT the way to describe pregnancy as it is inaccurate and a Harper should always strive to be accurate. It is a state of having to heave around an extra little person only on the inside where you can't adjust the balance. Try dangling a bag full of rocks tied around your waist and see if the pain on your back makes you feel especially well tempered. Anyway, what makes you assume she IS pregnant?"

Vaek grinned.

"If she wasn't pregnant sir, you'd have both waited until she came out as a girl or was made Journeyman."

Domick snorted.

"Precocious brat. It is NOT a subject for comment even when she DOES start wearing dresses."

"Oh no sir!" said Vaek, adding simply "Like keeping your wedding private. You've trusted us to be discreet; and we will be. We just like to KNOW things."

"I'll wear a gown to play for Lord Groghe's New Turn Gather" decided Meeri. As many apprentices went home for Turnover, the Fort Gather was generally held either before the holiday or after Turnover when the boys returned. "Besides," she added, "there's new female apprentices coming for real – I mean, not hidden – in addition to Dorasha and Irette, so I'll be fairly openly dorming with them."

"Aren't you going to live with Master Domick?" demanded Dekello, disapprovingly.

Meeri laughed.

"While he's still crafting some revisions to the Gather piece? I have a sense of self preservation!"

"You MINX!" spluttered Domick.

She slid her arms around him.

"You know you'd not want me distracting you until you get used to having me and children around; and you also know you want to tell me to stay with the apprentices so as not to be distracted from my own studies" she said.

He pulled a face.

"I DO think you would study better. I don't want to stand in the way of my star pupil's development. I'M no Petiron."

Meeri nodded, recalling that Domick had spoken of the man when they discussed neither pushing nor being jealous of children.

"I move in with you and acknowledge the relationship either if people fuss too much when baby is born, or when I'm made up to Journeyman. I know your mind well enough."

"You do. Well, Vaek, is your enquiring mind sufficiently satisfied?" said Domick.

"Oh, fully, sir! thank you!" grinned Vaek.

"What about Stev and the others?" asked Laghen. "What will happen to them with more girls coming in?"

Sebell smiled an austere smile.

"Let's just say they are ready to move further in the craft" he said softly "And that IS a matter for complete discretion!"

"All of them?" Domick ased the question, taken aback.

"Why not?" said Sebell. "You've praised them all often enough. T'rin brought them on first; then they kept that up AND have been doing unofficial teaching duties as well; the least talented is Lisend, and he already knows more drum measures – thanks to the High Reaches logic tables – than most of the Drum Journeymen. It would be sheer hypocrisy to hold them back purely on age. Shoris will help with voice training, Stev I've a mind to put coaching the slow ones Morshall has trouble with and Kerill and Anslas out on assignment with Braid and Gavel as assigned apprentices to help to give those two some experience. Kister wants help with the travelling Holdless in Lemos and Igen; and he writes of a community living under a bridge. I didn't quite understand, but Kerill and Braid would be eminently suitable there. And Anslas and Gavel to poke their noses into cotholds."

Domick nodded.

"My apologies for questioning - and in front of apprentices too! You are right of course. Those lads have progressed further with their self help. As this bunch of hooligans doubtless will."

The bunch of hooligans grinned.

"And let this be a test of your discretion and the possibility of further trust in you that Braid and Gavel have no idea that they will be travelling with Journeymen, nor that any of those to be posted as Journeymen learn of the same either" Sebell said to the four boys. "No hints; no suggestions that you know important news. Nothing!"

The boys exchanged dismayed looks; not even hinting to their companions would be hard.

"We won't let you down, sir" said Jaynor, answering as spokesman as the others nodded solemn agreement.

It was a good test.

They had shown discretion to date in keeping Meeri's secret; but that was for loyalty to a friend. This was a more abstract discretion!

Domick smiled to himself. Robinton would not have done it this way; but Sebell was not Robinton. And it was clever of Sebell to pose this test with seemingly loose talk in front of the four; and to make it clear to the boys that this would BE a test.

It would also double their incentive to keep quiet about the whole incident.

"Sir?" asked Vaek "How old was T'rin when he made Journeyman?"

"I believe it was the ridiculously young age of fourteen turns" said Sebell. "No more than fifteen in any case. He WAS old for his turns, remember; he had been caring for a crippled sister and living Holdless. The circumstances were exceptional."

Vaek nodded, satisfied.

"And that crowd are around sixteen, some of them not quite there yet, so it gives us a point to aim for," he said, "and to study hard enough to be worthy."

Sebell laughed.

"Anything that makes any of you youngsters study has to be good," he said, "so long as you don't overdo it and burn out. You're here to have fun as well as to learn, you know!"

"THAT's not likely to be a problem with this bunch" said Domick, dryly.

Vaek managed to look the picture of injured innocence. He knew it fooled no-one; but it had to be done for form's sake. He exchanged a speaking glance with the others. If they were not Journeymen before they were sixteen it would not be for want of hard work between pranks!

oOoOo

Meeri wished her friends well; she would also work with their self help group in the hopes of becoming a Journeyman herself, though she doubted it would be much before them, for her lack of formal training. The speed at which she had caught up had not occurred to her, and she would have been amazed to know that the Masterharper thought that another Turn would be quite sufficient for her! As it was, Meeri also had other things to contemplate; her love for Domick, and the growing life within her.

Whilst she might live largely with the other apprentices she had plans for her new husband over the Turnover break that did not wholly involve musical pursuits!

oOoOo

The four apprentices, as pregnant with news as Meeri as with child, almost burst at times in the effort of concealing that they even had news, let alone what it was; and seven sevendays dragged slowly! The end of the turn came at last, however and their patience would be rewarded with the silent smile of approval from Sebell.

The end of the Turn brought a feast and the posting of confirmation of apprenticeships – and the new Journeymen.

Stev, Anslas, Kerill and Lisend were almost in tears as grinning Journeymen escorted them to their new places at the Journeyman table. Others were made up too, including the violinist Foley, whom Meeri also applauded loudly.

And Braid and Gavel were delighted to be given the responsible task of accompanying some of their favourite new Journeymen on missions!

The surprise to the four who had kept so quiet as to everyone else was the appointment of Menolly – more obviously pregnant than Meeri – to Master! And THAT piece of news brought thunderous applause! Nobody had expected any Masters to be made up without Master Robinton; and in a way, that brought it home in a bittersweet way that he would not be returning.

It had been a good turn.

Meeri sighed with happiness; and let her gaze wander to the Masters' table to catch and hold a particular pair of brown eyes and run her tongue over her lips in promise of a feast of a different kind later!

And if Domick choked slightly into his klah, he too looked forward to the new turn, and the changes it would bring with incipient fatherhood, and a lifetime of music with Meeri.

**finis**

**And may I also finish with thanks to Trancefan who went over this to take out the typos for me and suggest some imrovements. Thanks Trancefan! Trancefan has also kindly taken over transcribing my appalling handwriting [and by the way thanks to Bron whose handle I'm afraid I've forgotten for starting transcribing the next story!] so you'll be getting another one soon!  
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